


the helmsman of a boat that’s filled with shades

by Filigranka



Series: Napisane, by zadowolić moje wewnętrzne dziecko, id i wszystko, co wyparte [27]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Class Issues, Enemies, F/M, Galaxy is Not Nice, Gray&Gray Morality, Idealism, Lady Organa's Lover, Leia Is Not Nice, Manipulation, Politics, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Slow Burn, Space Communists, Stranded, but less fun for my id and my inner child, only the victims are never wrong (but they lack charisma points), perhaps it'd be easier to write a philosophical treatise about SW
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-22 20:17:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21308000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/pseuds/Filigranka
Summary: When half of the galaxy tries to kill them, Leia and Hux are forced to cooperate to escape - and they end up in the nice, well-equipped hidden base. Unfortunately, its rich equipment doesn't include communication devices... Waiting for the rescue, they try (not) to kill each other (and not betray The Cause).(Every ship in SW fandom needs a fic with "stranded together on an empty station/planet". Here's the one for Leia/Hux.Title's stolen from Słowacki translated by Michael Mikos)
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Leia Organa
Series: Napisane, by zadowolić moje wewnętrzne dziecko, id i wszystko, co wyparte [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30017
Comments: 52
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

Vendetta, mused Leia, was such a powerful thing. Known to destroy communities and cities, suspected of razing planets to the ground. 

There were a lot of important people on Hosnian Prime. Important people and their close ones. Many, many families had a reason to demand blood and blood only, without even trying the financial compensation, mediation route.

And the huge part of the galaxy’s elites didn’t seem to care who started this new war or which side of it was right. They didn’t give a damn it was Leia’s fighters which saved them from even more destruction. The First Order and The Resistance were at war and their war cost the grieving families – the galaxy – too much. The First Order and The Resistance had to pay. It was simple, in a sense. Perhaps even fair, from the perspective of, let’s say, a mountain, a rock, a star.

As one of the families’ envoy had put it, if Leia had bowed her head, backed off, allowed the Order to take what they wanted, the Hosnian cataclysm would be avoided. For the price of freedom, a steep one, indeed, but was it higher than the one the galaxy was forced to pay? 

She’d answered “You’re naive fools”and“I never kneel”. The families hadn’t bothered contacting her again, just slapped a bounty on her head, as high as for the commanders of the First Order. 

Thugs, mercenaries and the usual rest had been greedy, but also cautious enough to form a collective and decided to do _the thing_ in a single stroke, capturing both generals: Hux—the drawback of becoming the poster boy of mass murder was getting the highest bounty—and Organa.

This, to Leia’s surprise, turned out to be a good thing: while this pompous war criminal had yet to see the battle he wouldn’t lose, he had been taught to shoot—to take orders—decently enough, and escaping from the ship’s prison cells was always easier with two pair of hands firing blasters. 

He was also apparently obsessed with blowing things up and good with handy craft enough to rewire the ship’s oxygen system. Thanks to this Leia could watch now, from the relative comfort of the escape pod, as the ship of the bounty hunters fell apart, shaken with explosions.

The first explosion had been smaller, destroying the hyperspace engine only, and allowing them to escape in the pod; leaving the ship while in hyperspace would be a pretty quick method of suicide. Unlike getting stranded in the escape pod in the vast middle of the cosmic nowhere, which would be a very lengthy method of suicide, if not for the basic navigation unit information they could access from the machine-room—“security flaw”, Hux’d snarled—and Leia’s Force abilities, which had told her when exactly that little pyromaniac should start the reaction. 

She could almost imagine she heard the terrified, pained screams of the bounty hunters when the vacuum and fire—there had been some fire inside before the vacuum snuffed it—claimed them. Or perhaps she was sensing it through the Force, and perhaps she should stop because it didn’t seem like a Light Side thing to do. 

She wasn’t feeling like doing Light Side things. Not that it mattered; she always did what she was _obligated _to either way. And where had it led her? To sitting in the same escape pod with a genocidal hysteric, still in his uniform with his false-general ranks, aiming his blaster at her. That nonsense forced Leia to aim at him, too, albeit more nonchalantly. 

She wouldn’t be surprised if he snapped in half, so tense he was. On his cheek, the bruise from her punch back in his cell was forming already. His hand would tremble at some point—but hers would sooner, he had the advantage of age and military training.

‘I’ve killed way more beings looking them straight in the eyes than you ever have. Put this toy away, boy, before you shoot our life support systems. Mind you, I already survived in the vacuum once.’

Hux’s laughter sounded hysterical, but his aim didn’t falter. Leia wondered if she shouldn’t calm him down. This idiot, shooting blindly, could damage the pod. Surviving in the vacuum hadn’t been the most pleasant experience and she wasn’t sure if she could repeat it on a whim. She had already used—controlled—the Force a lot for her current ability level. Had it been higher, she would just throttle this little rat, not argue with him.

‘Put the gun away,’ she repeated, in a lower, calmer voice. ‘There’s no hyperspace drive here, but we’re near an abandoned smugglers’ base, we should survive. No need for hysteria.’

‘I’m not—‘

‘—You certainly are. Let me guess, first time killing, not ordering to kill? You’ll be all right. You just need a decent sleep.’

‘You assume too much, princess.’

‘Tell me I’m not right.’

His mouth shivered like he would stop himself just before talking. Leia corrected her grip on the weapon.

‘I think it’s apparent for the whole galaxy,’ Hux was barking now, ‘that our definitions of “right” are very different.’

‘Apparently not for the bounty hunters. Perhaps you should scream more in this pathetic speech of yours. Or more coherently. They might have noticed then.’

She sensed his focus faltering. Hux took a breath, to start a speech defending the honour of his previous one, undoubtedly. 

Ego, the murderer of men. Leia shot.

A thin pillow under his head and a heavy blanket on him. A mattress, medium-hard. A bed in front of his—ah, so he was lying in the bed, too. White walls. Easily washable tiles imitating wood on the floor. Temperature low, but not dangerously so. 

Behind the window – a view which most of the humans in the galaxy would classify as nice. Trees. A lot of green. Soothing, supposedly. They holographed things like this on the bedrooms of the younger stormtroopers. 

‘I’m in dire need of a plumber.’

At the door—the damn princess. Of course. And the weight of his weapons—the ones he’d taken from the killed bounty hunters—was gone. 

‘A—‘ he coughed; his throat, as usual after stunning, was completely dry. ‘—a plumber?’

‘Certainly not an incompetent general.’ She had already changed from her long, navy blue dress into a grey working uniform; it must have been part of the station’s equipment. ‘The heating doesn’t work. The pipes don’t seem corroded, so I guess it’s the plugging problem. The group before us probably forgot to drop the water out. Or something in the electrics, but the systems here are all basics, they can work for decades without—Oh? You need a drink?’

Hux tried to curse her. Not so easy when one is chocking on their pride, with their tongue swollen, head exploding from pain and throat dry like Tatooine desert. He gave up on cursing after a moment under the princess polite, falsely concerned gaze. 

‘And... communication devices?’

‘If there were any, you would wake up bound or in the interrogation cell.’

‘The Resistance can afford an interrogation cell?’

‘We rent one by hours.’ Leia smiled and leaned on the wall. ‘Probably whoever constructed this place expected the smugglers to have their own communication equipment and didn’t want to risk betraying the location by accident. It’s one of these hidden stash bases, you know.’

Hux was standing up, slowly. Stunning effects usually needed half an hour at most to recede. Including, unfortunately, not only the unpleasant but also the pain-killing one.

‘I don’t. I’m not the one with the smuggler husband. Oh. You’re neither, not any more. My condolences.’

Her face hardened for a moment. Then it became the impenetrable, smiling mask again. 

‘The station has some rations and the moon is formed to be habitable for humans. The plants are edible and the animals—non-threatening. I will be safe here until some smugglers come. Perhaps I’ll find a way to leave before. Perhaps I’ll convince them to drop me off at one of my old friends’. Perhaps I’ll let them capture me and then escape again. I’ll be all right. You.’ She cocked her head. ‘I can kill right now.’

‘If it was only about some damn pipes you would have killed me already.’ _And not have bothered dragging me out of the escape pod, which must have been hard work, even with the help of station droids._

‘Well, I could deal with the pipes myself, but my back would _kill_ _me_ for days. And without working pipes, I’ll have to bathe in cold water. I survived Hoth, I’ll survive here, but I’d prefer not to.’ She sighed. ‘Do you need me to spell it out for you, boy? The station is far from the most popular hyperlanes, we will spend at least a few weeks here. It’s easier to survive with some company. I see no need to make things harder for myself.’ Her face softened. Time for a space carrot, then. ‘Or for you.’

‘You would trust me?’

‘I trust the Force. I trust the self-preservation instincts of the rat. You’re a man who shoots from a distance. Preferably one counted in parsecs.’

He shouldn’t be irritated by this. It was such an obvious move. Enrage him, throw him out of balance. Let him make mistakes and give her some intel. He knew this, could draw a diagram out of her words – here, she kicked him, there, she offered him some help, token of positive emotions, this whole game was so obvious – and yet they worked. He felt the tension rising beneath his skin, all the usual signs: the pain shooting along the lines of his veins, springing into more pain at the joints, muscles getting stiff. After the stunning and the forced physical relaxation it had brought – not a good sign.

‘I don’t find any failing in it. I killed half of the Republic’s fleet without losing one of my soldiers.’

‘And then lost two of your ships fighting with a small partisan group. What does this tell us?’

There was a hint of honest the reflection in her voice, honest enough to make him curious. He remained silent, waiting for her to continue – and this, in turn, seemed to pick Leia’s interest. It was hard to say for sure with this smiling mask she wore instead of her true face. Oh, the princess would survive in the Order without the help of the damn Force, unlike her thrice damned son. 

‘You’re good at constructing things and situations. Working with stable data and with a stable, long-term goal in mind. The law of physics and mathematics don’t change or improvise, or act... inappropriately.’ The corner of Leia’s mouth rose, for a second, and it seemed more genuine than her usual smiles. Of course, it didn’t mean anything. ‘But actual battle is something very different. Do you know the saying? Plans never survive the first contact with the enemy. And you’re no good at improvising, boy. Making quick decisions. Your lack of real experience doesn’t help. You must be terribly afraid, now.’

He was not— 

‘Of one elderly ex-senator with back problems? Hardly.’

‘I mean: in the Order. Under the new rule. I heard you’re undergoing quite a reform. People on Canto Bight are already betting on personal changes.’ 

—he had been terrified since the first day on Jakku. Or earlier. He had known the feeling, used it well. His fear was something very different from what the princess—any princess—could imagine.

‘New rulership.’ He snarled at her. The fog in his head was almost cleared, and he could trust his legs now. ‘You mean your son’s unexpected promotion? I saw the propaganda posters you commissioned. All of them... There’s no mention of your son, of our new Supreme Leader, on a single one. What does _this_ tell us?’ He went to the door, avoiding her gaze. 

She was right in one thing: she had all the cards in her hand, the guns, knowledge about this place, even the damn Force. He might as well—he needed to—play along. Lull her into a sense of security. 

‘I suppose this is my destined bedroom?’

‘Not destined. There’re others. Pick whatever one, just far away from mine. And before you ask, yes, I took the commander’s _royal_ single bedroom.’

He shrugged. ‘This one will do. So, where are those pipes?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to callmelyss and Nibi for cheering me when I was writing it (well, what I have written by now) and to Potboy for beta-ing this for me and finally telling me to post the fist chapter. <3
> 
> Title's stolen from Słowacki's My Testament. It's very beautiful poem, incredibly important for Polish culture, but, as with all Romantic poems, it's just... not translated well. For many reasons, starting with "Polish isn't popular language and therefore there ain't tons of translators". ;) But a lot of Polish-language Romanticism lit. fits Leia and Hux - as characters - very well, several of the lines in this one poem fit them perfectly, so well. If you mix these two translations, you'll get the word-by-word meaning of the poem, although not its beauty.
> 
> http://slowacki.chez.com  
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/My_Testament
> 
> Oh, and the line about ship is indeed /the/ testament of all niche shippers. ;)


	2. Chapter 2

‘Fucking useless post-Imperial junk!’

He’d been almost finished. The only thing left had been refilling the main heater. And then the water pressure had jumped and here he was, wet from head to toe, his hand slipping on the heater’s valve, with the fortunately still _cold_ water running down his back, neck and face, coming into his eyes.

‘Don’t be so harsh on yourself.’

The water stopped. Leia must have closed the main valve.

Hux turned his head to the door. His hair came into his view, but he didn’t feel like pushing it back when the princess was looking. Why, he had no idea.

‘You managed to clean up the pipes. Not completely useless, then.’ Leia came closer. She was getting her trousers wet — not that it mattered. ‘What’s wrong with the heater?’

‘Nothing.’ It had been his mistake, his stupid mistake of not checking the pressure regulation one more time, not blocking it properly. He would adjust it in a moment. ‘I’ll change one thing, refill again and you can have your royal, warm bath.’

‘Can you also create the bubbles?’

Such an obvious move. Positive motivation; we’re on the same side for a moment, boy, let’s cooperate and joke with each other. Like he would. But it was also a challenge, a technical one.

‘I’ll see what we have in the supplies. Anything similar to soda or only pre-prepared rations? I’d not recommend breaking the medical supplies to get the fizzling effect, but I suppose the royal priorities might be different. Cakes before bread, as the saying goes.’

Leia laughed. Hux was startled — not so much by the laughter, but how warm it sounded. Like she wouldn’t intend to mock, but...

He had no idea what else she might want to do. Unless it was another round of the manipulation: bite and smile, hurt and soothe, the stick and the boon.

‘You know—‘ She reached to his brow.

Hux raised his hand—if she was trying to gouge his eyes, she’d break her fingers, the old attack and defence of criminals Jakku’s children had taught him—and jumped back, almost slipping on the floor. The tension lowered through the work, returned, this time with a surge of adrenaline, strong enough he felt, heard in his ears, the rush of blood.

Somebody aimed for his eyes, somebody was close enough to aim, he let someone close enough—he made a mistake, one which could cost him his sight, his life, he would become useless, he would be sent to—he—

He should take a breath, focus and calm down. He made a circus of himself. In the presence of the enemy. Great. The only way it could go worse would be if he had slipped and the damn princess would’ve needed to catch him. Or if she hadn’t done so and he had fallen straight at her feet.

No need for further hysterics, betraying himself more. The only thing he needed was a damage control.

‘Any blasters hid beneath your dress, princess? Ready to kill me, now, when I cleared the pipes?’

‘Melodramatic young man, aren’t we?’ She tilted her head to left. ‘You thought I was going for your eyes? It was a reasonable thought. Sorry.’ A heavy sigh. ‘I don’t intend to hurt you for the duration of our staying here. Let’s call it a “ceasefire” and focus on a bath and a dinner, a decent sleep, an exploration and then planning our next moves, shall we?’

‘It seems to me you already planned some of them.’

‘That’s just common sense. We need some nutrition and rest, it’s obvious. Bath is useful for hygienic and psychological reasons. Boy, please. I have blasters and vibroknives. I can point them at your head and order you to eat something and get some rest. But it’s not exactly the most effective way of management. It would end with us focusing on how to outsmart each other. You will lose, but I won’t get the reliable—

‘—servant.‘

She stilled.

‘—_No_. Servitude implies trust much deeper than a ceasefire. Our circumstances force us to cooperate. That’s all. I neither need nor desire your services or servitude, murderer.’ She turned on her heel.

Walking to the door, she didn’t even glance at him, but Hux didn’t try to attack her. Her damn son always did the same trick, too, showing you his back, provoking the attack and then sensing it through the Force and avoiding—pushing back—effortlessly.

He’d had a bath and drunk tea. Was drinking tea, the second cup of it, to be precise. When he had come back to the kitchen, jointed with the common room—so, a cantina—the tea was already waiting.

Probably the only thing Leia could “cook”. But it was good.

She was sitting on the other side of the table, studying him. She seemed genuinely curious, which was both infuriating and satisfying – and the second part of this realisation turned Armitage’s stomach upside down. _Attention-whore._ Leia treated him like an insect under the microscope, that was all.

‘Do you like it?’

Hux blinked.

‘The tea. There’s quite a choice in the kitchen.’

Really. Like he would believe all this small talk was anything else than the form of an interrogation.

‘So this base belongs to either Corellian or Huttese influence spheres. Is there any kaf?’

‘A little. One kind, not very sophisticated one.’ Hux apparently let the disappointment show on his face, because she laughed. ‘Oh, someone’s addicted, I see?’

‘Hardly. Lack of kaf points to Hutts. I’m not happy with potentially being caught by Huttese goons in a company of the Huttslayer.’

‘Considering how high the bounties on our heads are, I don’t think it makes any difference. There’s a great chance that whoever finds us here will try to capture us and claim the reward. The sooner the better. We won’t be able to leave without a hyperspace capable ship.’

‘And you think we’re going to steal one when it comes? Not end up aboard, heading for torture and execution?’

‘We already escaped once. The Force is with me.’ She tapped her fingers on the table, musing. Or pretending to be. ‘Since D’Qar and Crait... since I survived the vacuum... since Luke’s death...’ Her eyes escaped to the corner of the room. ‘I’ve felt it stronger than ever, so. I’ve started lessons. I’m a quick learner. You saw on the ship.’

He had. The way she’d broken him out of the cell, opening the door with those damn mystic powers. She’d slapped his face, “Do you wish to live or die, murderer?” and despite his chains he’d tried to push her, grabbed her weapon, and she’d laughed: “So ‘live’ it is. All right, you might be useful. Just don’t try anything until we get out of here. I won’t harm you, either.’

He’d remarked that she already had done so. Leia’d shrugged, turned on her heel and said he could remain in bonds, then.

Hux’d managed to keep his uninterested face – “you’re going to your death, _princess_, you can’t stop them alone” – for all the five seconds it’d took her to go out and disappear from his view. Then he’d been struck by the realisation she wasn’t coming back, leaving him to die chained like a dog, and the wave of panic-fuelled neurochemical cocktail, bubbling under the surface since his capture, had finally crashed on him. Like a bloody tsunami.

His memories of those of few minutes were rather blurry. He remembered the fragments. Leia’s eventual return. Her staying his hands. Her matter of fact words’ – “if you break your joints you won’t aim properly” – cutting through the fog in his brain. “Hush, murderer, let me take you out of those. See? Easy. Now, take this blaster and aim not at me, but at the bounty hunters who are going to be here in, like, half a minute. I’m going to explore this level, let’s meet near the elevator, may the For—ehm.”

She’d lured them to his cell and then marched out. But this, at least, had given Hux a clear, nice goal. He hadn’t been the master of shooting, but he had had enough training. He’d _managed_.

‘Do you want another cup?’

Hux looked at Leia, startled. He lost himself in the thoughts, and she could—

—_What? if she wanted to kill you, you gave her plenty of occasions, _hissed a voice in his brain, one of those voices without the proper form, one of those which could belong to anybody. His father. Snoke. Ren. Pryde. Other boys. _She’s like her brother. Sanctimonious, desperate for _rules _to pretend she’s better. And it’s her mistake. Use it. What were you born for, if not for killing the princes, bastard-child? Wouldn’t you kill your legal brother, if your father sired one?_

Well, he would, the voice got this right. But he was tired and damn it all, after a day of getting captured, getting saved – and _by whom_ – and captured-stunned again, and on top of that getting outwitted by a heater... Yes he deserved another cup of tea. Especially made by the princess. It was perfectly in line with the ideology.

Leia came back with the third cup. The tea was sweeter this time, more flowery, according to what Hux remembered about flowers.

‘What are you addicted to? Stims, spices, sleeping pills, calming meds... Don’t deny. I know your glorious Order drugs most of its members.’

‘It’s not “drugging”, it’s “helping”. Do you call bacta a narcotic drug, too? And I’m not going to—’

‘Spare me the propaganda. I just need to know how far you’re from the withdrawal symptoms. Drug yourself however much you want, but there’s not much of narcotics here. A pack of the basic stims, a handful of relaxing spice, that’s all.‘

Fuck. That was bad and worse that she already knew about the issue. Hux, like most of the officers, had the artificial emotional stability’s helpers well-built into his organism. Which, on one hand, meant he could survive some time without them, the percentage in his blood and neurons won’t disappear in a day or two—they never use highly-addictive meds, the kind which would render you useless in a day or two of not taking, exactly because of situations like this—especially considering all the anti-addiction neural blockers they all also consumed. If there were any stims at all, he could manage a good few weeks... Or at least avoid the worst withdrawal effects.

In theory, the situation was under control. Unfortunately, the Order’s theory didn’t include the additional substances he’d taken recently. Because of Ren. Finishing Starkiller Base. Other things. And that had been... a lot.

‘We in the Order know how to survive a few weeks without the help of chemicals. It wouldn’t do for us to become dependent.’ Definitely not in the early days, when they often didn’t have enough food, even. ‘But I’ll take a look at the stims.’ He hesitated. If it had been an interrogation, the first games of many they would play over the table, it’d be better to let her believe he was easily led. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m not eager to hold your hair when the withdrawal nausea hits. But I will, if I have to.' She shrugged. ‘I intend to keep my word about the ceasefire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, tomorrow is a national holiday and we have a family party today (it's already Saturday here ;)), so I prefer to post it now. 
> 
> Potboy beta-ed this for me, again! <3 <3


	3. Chapter 3

The next days were full of chaotic jumping from decently amiable conversations over tea, mostly focused on exploration of the base, to furious ideological arguments, ending with Leia promising she’d have stunned him if he hadn’t shut up.

But mostly, they both did their own things. The station was, indeed, excellently formed and self-sufficient, luxurious even—there was not only tea, but also alcohol, some plain, loose clothes in sizes fitting for the statistically most popular species, blankets and sleeping bags in storage, a few places with clear water, and lot of edible plants in the garden and artificial forest. A nice pantry contained some frozen and vacuum-packed food ingredients, like bread and meat. Also, pre-prepared rations, which they both opted to use for now.

Leia even found the soda and Hux, feeling strangely challenged, baked those bath bubbles for her. Thrice damn times (first, he was only informed they should be scented in the middle of the baking – fortunately the princess agreed to using culinary flavourings, so he didn’t have to pick some damn petals or herbs – second, he messed up the time; the kitchen smelled of burnt lemon for the next two days).

But there was no sign of a communication device. Hux had gutted the escape pod—Leia’d forbidden him from destroying the station’s droids—and tried to improvise something from its basic navigation and distress-signal sending system. He hadn’t managed to create a long-range transmitter yet, but he had made a couple of weapons. Small ones, completely useless against someone with the Force and blasters, but still—a shard of control. A way of checking how strictly the princess controlled him, and proving to himself that it was not so much. Useless and stupid of him, because he didn’t mean to harm her.

Or rather: he didn’t have precise, specific plans of doing so.

He knew he would have to hurt her at some point, preferably after they got out of here. He could bribe some smugglers well enough without the princess’ “help”— it hadn’t escaped his notice that her “ceasefire” wasn’t extended beyond “their staying here”. Which, he was pretty sure, meant she was going to turn on him the moment said smugglers’ ship left the dock.

She would turn on him unless he stopped her. And even the smallest weapon could take one a long way, if one’s opponent was not expecting it. Or so he told himself, constructing those silly tasers. They were like that not-quite-practical blade in his sleeve, something to cling to, with which to calm oneself to focus on more important things. _Stupid_. But at least this way he had something to do.

The princess, as far as he knew, used the time for Force-training in her rooms. Probably trying to contact with their new Jedi girl with it. Fair enough. If Hux had managed to make something out of those scraps, he wouldn’t have called a neutral party either.

Sun, light breeze, some birds singing. In the middle of this—Hux, feeling like a particularly incompetent droid.

‘Could you tell me what’s the purpose of this?’

‘I already told you,’ princess sounded _delighted_. ‘Walking itself is a purpose. You’re constantly marching through the corridors, one would think you’d appreciate the activity.’

‘Corridors are designed for the purpose. And flat.’ Outside, while formed for humans’ comfort, included things like grass, flowers, trees, not only garden, but also a small forest-like structure... All of them were pretty uneven. And might contain traps. Holes. Slippery soil, like wet sand or wet grass. Things you would set out for cadets, to teach them a lesson.

‘We are walking on a path. They’re, ah, designed for this purpose, too. You should raise your eyes, you know. Admire the view. This dotted sky is quite pretty.’

Aha. Raise your eyes and slip on something, and sprain your ankle, and humiliate yourself before the princess. Or _made be_ slipped by an accidental Force-push.

‘It’s impractical. And I’ve seen enough of the skies from the middle of the asteroid field in my life.’

However, he tried to pay some attention to their surroundings. Even if the whole habitat of this cosmic body was artificially created and therefore probably devoid of any human-threatening predators, one could never be too cautious.

‘The water is clear, we can swim there.’

Leia gestured at north, where the water was shining through the leaves and for once, Hux felt some... interest. A pleasure. Curiosity. Half-forgotten memory. A mix of all useless feelings. There had been no natural running water at Starkiller Base, and he’d spent years there. He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen something like this.

‘And let you drown me? Thanks, but no.’

Leia’s laugh seemed more soft than sarcastic. This must be a trick of his mind, drowning in the planetside atmosphere. Hux already felt too lightheaded and more tired than he should be. That was a drawback of living aboard the ships; they had rooms imitating planets’ surfaces, of course, used before any planetary missions, but his current... break... had been unplanned and his schedule before it had been too tight to find time for a standard adjustment session. It had been months since Starkiller Base was destructed and he’d set foot on Crait.

Perhaps this whole “walk” was the princess’ ploy. He was fairly sure he wasn’t going to lose consciousness now, but she might have wanted to try the option nonetheless.

Except she still had the Force and the weapons, one of the blasters on her, the rest in her room. There were much easier ways of disposing of him, if she had had any desire to.

‘There’s a shortcut here, but we can also go via the flat, designed-for-the-purpose path. It’s just boring.’ Leia pointed to the left.

The water was shining through the leaves. Like a shards of glass, white from the reflected light.

Hux had thought about not-yet-Starkiller’s kyber crystals as essentially big mirrors, once, traps for the light of the stars, the way of changing its billion years old paths. To change the climates on some planets. To blackmail others with changing it, too. To change the night sky. Create some new shortcuts, perhaps. But it would have taken more time and effort, and wouldn’t have been so... spectacular as a weapon. The energy cost would be lower, though, there would have been no need to drain basically the whole star... No nice name, then. LightCatcher? LightGranary? The PR department would’ve killed him with laughter.

The water was shining. If he’d ever built that thing, he could literally boil planets. Burn them, slowly. Cooked them up.

He wondered if it ever rained here. If the object was self-sufficient and human-centred, it should. If they stayed here long enough, he might get to see it.

Of course, he didn’t wish to stay here long. He had work in the Order. And there was also the matter of his standing with the organisation, which was probably weakening with every passing hour. As for that one—or more—rat who’d given him to bounty hunters in the first place...

‘Armitage?’ Leia touched his arm, briefly. Her concern had to be false. Hux should have learnt to dismiss it. ‘Come here. We will take the shortcut. You can definitely use some rule-breaking.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone's late (tries to look innocent). And comes with a short chapter pf nothing except Leia and Hux doing things (because Leia and Hux doing things is everything I ever wanted in this fandom :D) - the next one is longer, though. 
> 
> And I'll reply to comments, I promise, I'm just a little busy (with good things, though) now!


	4. Chapter 4

Leia told herself she was bored and deserved a break from the Force-training routine. She was sick of meditations. With Hux nearby, she couldn’t keep her thoughts from flowing in the direction of Hosnian Prime.

She’d lived there for so long. She had known those people, those places, those traditions. She lived there almost as long—or perhaps, in days, even longer—than on Alderaan. And like Alderaan, it was now all gone. It was as if the Force willed for her every home to get destroyed before her eyes. Like her presence, her choices, her fight, were a curse. A part of the galaxy was already saying so.

She shouldn’t dwell on it, thoughts like that were always hindering action. Hosnian Prime hadn’t been Alderaan. Hux wasn’t Tarkin.

She just wasn’t quite sure which of them was worse. Hux killed more people. Tarkin would never make her bubbles just because she teased him and would’ve already tried to kill her a few times.

These wandering thoughts were terribly distracting when one was trying to deepen their connection with the Force and yet not to make her presence shown in it. Leia knew she wouldn’t be able to contact Rey or anyone else without alarming Ben, but she could still learn how to control her powers better. Which was becoming increasingly difficult. She hoped the break would help her.

Besides, Hux’s progress on whatever machine he was assembling needed to be checked upon. And since he seemed to be easily... confused, manipulated, controllable... by any signs of domesticity, she didn’t bother with changing, and came to the hangar, annexed by Hux for a workshop, in a long, fluffy red bathrobe. And with tea.

Corellian or Huttese; it wasn’t the wrong conclusion. Lando was under Huttese influence, and it was him who rediscovered and renovated this station a few years ago. That was why she knew about it and felt pretty safe. Lando checked on his routes and... assets... regularly. Someone from his organisation should come here in a few weeks at most; probably sooner than some stray pirates or smugglers. And Lando wouldn’t hurt her. Neither would he support her openly, of course, but she could count on a lift to the nearest neutral system and a call to one from The Resistance’s sympathisers.

Hux, well, in this scenario he might wake up in an interrogation cell. Or, if Lando insisted, she might leave “the general” to him as a payment. In those few weeks, the bounty could only rise. Although it had been pretty nice of Hux to make those bath bubbles. Perhaps a blaster bolt to his back would be kinder. Perhaps he could even be...

Perhaps Leia should be more worried about the Resistance’s fate. But she had established a clear chain of command after getting the news about the bounty. Had explained to them all what to do if she disappeared, namely, not lose hope and not throw everything to go searching for her. With the war again in the cold phrase and the Order focused on negotiation with planets’ governments, The Resistance needed to lie low for a couple of months either way. They shouldn’t fall apart in just few weeks.

Perhaps the Order would, though. Perhaps nobody except Hux knew how to repair, let’s say, the plumbing system of their fleet. She felt the familiar shadow of worry about Ben and then a pang of guilt, familiar even more. She let them pass, indifferent, imagining waves on the lake’s surface after a thrown stone, and walked into the hangar.

Hux glanced at her over his shoulder and frowned, before shrugging and coming back to work. She put the tea on the nearest toolbox—Hux’s frown deepened—and sat on the floor, making sure the robe would isolate her from the cold surface. All the years in conspiracy taught her there was absolutely no need to make life harder for oneself, especially for the sake of some useless posturing. 

‘Tea.’ She tried to make her voice both exasperated and relatively gentle.

Hux worked his jaw, but when he answered, he sounded polite enough.

‘I’m aware. Thank you.’

He made a show of putting the tools down and looking bothered. Such a sulky little rat.

Leia looked at the mess on the floor. That half-done attempt at a communication device, a lot of gutted parts and... Oh. The Force brought her attention to one specific thing, almost obscured by the toolbox, just right at Hux’s arm. Something like a small taser.

A sulky, treacherous little rat.

‘How it’s going? Able to blow up the station already?’

‘No.’ His gaze become alarmed, intent. Too late, _General_.

‘To kill me, then?’

He went completely still.

‘No,’ there was a child-like insistence in his voice.

‘Really? I mean, I could hardly blame you. I’d blame myself for thinking your lot is able to keep their word. I’d blame myself for not killing you right—‘

‘Don’t.’ He curled his fingers into his palms.

‘Don’t what? Blame myself...? Why, would you prefer I blame you?’

His eyes darted to the teacup, then back to her. He wasn’t angry or waiting for the best moment to try to tase her with that improvised weapon. Just terrified, desperately controlling the fear and guessing what she might want.

They had been talking more or less amiably in these last few days. She brought him tea. She was almost twice his age, more than a head shorter. She was sitting on the floor in a fluffy, red bathrobe. Hardly a menacing presence. No matter how angry she was, she didn’t think that taser was built tonight—it was probably the very first thing Hux constructed, and if he hadn’t used it till now, then breaking their “ceasefire” wasn’t his highest priority. He must have known she realised it.

Yet he was really afraid now. Just when she planned to spend a relatively nice, intel-focused evening. Great.

‘I asked you a question.’

He drew a long breath.

‘Just throw me around or strangle me, or whatever is your preferred form of punishment. Don’t do these... these ceremonies.’ He stopped himself from saying the next words, but from the shape of his lips Leia would wager they would be “please”.

‘I wouldn’t...’ She shook her head. ‘I stunned you at the beginning, because you were _aiming at me. _I struck you in the prison, because you damn deserved it for everything you had done to the galaxy.’ And because she’d needed to establish the hierarchy, quickly, and everything she’d known about the First Order had pointed to violence being the only way Hux would have understood. And she’d come back for him. She’d come back. ‘But you helped me later and we have a ceasefire.’ _I was _nice to you_, despite everything, you murderer_.

_You helped me, so I was nice to you._ She caught herself at that thought. It had been an instinct, hadn’t it? Like in the Rebellion’s motto. “Everyone is welcome, no matter their past.” He had helped her and there had been a lot of adrenaline, like... Well, like before. Like with Han and Luke. Like with Ransolm. With so many others.

Perhaps that was why this damn improvised weapon hurt—enraged her. She had acted instinctively, without thinking, _like before_. But the situation was nothing like before and Hux was nothing like Ransolm or a few Rebels from the Imperial Academy. Not to mention nothing, nothing, nothing like Luke or Han.

Except, of course, Luke had also come from the Arkanis sector. Han’d liked mechanics. Ransolm was hiding himself beneath layers of pretty clothing. But those were stupid, little similarities, completely inconsequential. Hux was an enemy and he wasn’t going to turn. She should have realised it—the blind automatism of her behaviour—earlier. Should have stopped herself.

Some of this must have appeared on her face, because Hux tensed even more.

‘I should have told you. I apologise. I take full res—it was my mistake. It won’t happen again. I just needed something to feel better. Something to do. I didn’t mean it as a threat. I wouldn’t hurt—I’m not stupid—I’d not dare. You can take it, if you want.’

‘Really.’ Leia focused, recalling all those lessons with Rey, their desperate attempts to decipher the meaning of the Jedi manuscripts. She asked—no, she _wanted_, and the power in her veins answered, patient like a servant or a droid_._ The taser flew right into her hand. ‘I don’t think I need your permission, _General_.’

He looked pathetic. _I was nice to you,_ repeated a small, impossibly naive voice in Leia’s mind. _I was nice to you, I was nice to you, and now you not only betray me, but also dare to look afraid. Like I would hurt you. Like I would be anything like you and yours..._

‘I think I made some mistakes, indeed,’ she hissed. ‘Tell me, General, how your great and wise Supreme Leader would punish you. Perhaps our cooperation will be easier if I adjust myself to your standards.’

He sighed. Looked at the cup once more.

‘Hurt me. Strangle me. Use Force-lighting. Throw me at the wall. Or on my knees. I am—we are—always kneeling, when we talk with him. I mean, that was the protocol with Snoke and your—our current Supreme Leader—follows it, too. But really, it doesn’t matter. You may punish me however you prefer. I’m well-trained. If your soldiers can survive it, so will I.’

He had said something similar a moment before, but Leia’d somehow missed the implications, so the anger hit her now. How dared he imply that she would ever do anything like that to her—_oh, yes, let me show you how much I can do to those who deserve it, let’s check if you’re really so well-trained_—

—she got scared. Perhaps Hux flinched, perhaps she heard Luke’s voice, perhaps she felt it, that hungry, all-devouring darkness. Perhaps it was actually the voice of her damn father. A moment later she couldn’t be sure, but she was terrified. Of herself.

Hux gulped. His hand moved to his collar, started to loosen it nervously. Leia lunged forward, catching his fingers.

‘No, stop it, I won’t—‘ The words fell dead on her tongue.

She had seen Vader in action. She recognised the pale, almost faded bruises at Hux’s neck.

She’d known, of course. Hux’d mentioned strangling just seconds before. She’d known, she’d heard about—Poe’s torture, razed villages, Han’s death, she had felt _Han’s_ _death_, she had sensed her son mere hours later; but he was so torn then, so regretful, and then everything had disappeared, and Luke had been gone, too, and—and she’d _known_, but this was different. This felt like her visit to the ruins of Luke’s academy. A proof, the proof.

She could have told herself Ben was just misled. He hurt them because he believed them to be his enemies. She could have told herself he was doing the same thing they all did, fighting evil; he was just terribly, terribly manipulated by Snoke, by the Dark Side about which side really represented it.

But if he was hurting his own allies... There was no moral logic to it. No easy explanation, except he enjoyed the terror, just like his grandfather did, just like the dark, cursed blood in Leia’s veins sang. There was no joy in the knowledge her enemies were suffering from her son’s hands in such circumstances.

It took her a conscious effort not to recoil from Hux, from the trail of Ben’s fingers. She managed, but apparently not well enough. Hux saw it, read through her silence and attacked. A clumsy attack, the one born from fear just as much as anger.

‘Now, now, don’t you like it, princess? I should have shown you sooner. You must miss him. You haven’t seen him in years, right?’ He grabbed her hand, put it to his neck, and she didn’t have the will to stop him. ‘Here you go. From your son, with love. It’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to meeting him again. Compare your fingertips. See what a big, strong boy he became.’

Leia wasn’t going to feel sorry—it wasn’t her fault, _this _wasn’t her fault, the darkness in her son might be, but not the fact he was hurting the First Order, it was all on them, they’d tempted and lured him, and destroyed him, and now were just paying the price, she refused to feel sorry for them, she refused to even think about—she refused—she didn’t want to see this—

—she didn’t want to see this. She thought so, clearly, strongly. An order, a wish, a plea. Whatever it was, the Force listened.

The bruises, already pale, started to disappear beneath her fingertips. Hux’s eyes widened. He let go of her hand and her fingers wandered higher, to his cheek, bruised by her herself. She was healing. An enemy. That wasn’t the Dark Side, she was sure of it.

She felt the need to explain, nonetheless.

‘I don’t punish my soldiers physically.’ Except that one time with Poe, but that had been a critical case; it had been either a big, dramatic gesture or a trial for a mutiny. Or her losing any semblance of control and respect of her own army. ‘I don’t hurt them. Do you?’

Hux shook his head. The healing was finished, more or less, and Leia tried to move away, but he held her arm.

‘Don’t. Please,’ he murmured, avoiding her gaze. ‘And I don’t.’ He drew a breath, closed his eyes for a second. ‘Punish my people with force. I don’t throw my soldiers around or hit them. It wouldn’t be productive. They would get nervous. Stressed people make more mistakes. Like when Ren—’ He stopped, tensing.

Leia let it slide. She wondered more why he wanted her here, not touching him, but close—but then, did it really need a complicated explanation? They had spent about a standard week here already. He was accustomed to big ships, full of crew. The physical isolation and loneliness might start to take their toll.

Useful information, if The Resistance was ever to interrogate him.

‘Then why did you expect me to hurt you? Because I’m Ben’s mother? Vader’s daughter?’ The words tasted of ashes.

Constructing the weapon was close to a mutiny perhaps, but their circumstances were far from normal, and Hux hadn’t used it. Leia would have had to take it into account, even she did want...

‘Because you have the Force.’ He shrugged. ‘Why not? I’m not one of your people. I’m your enemy. The Order treats our enemies very differently than our allies. You do, too. Everybody does.’

Right, they—Ben—tortured Poe right away. Ah, but Leia had stopped treating Hux strictly like an enemy.. Because of this old, stupid habit. Living in the memories. Automatic gestures. The crux of some many of her current problems.

‘So if your side is going to find us first, you’re going to execute me? Good to know.’

Hux blinked. ‘We’re not. First, you’re a high-priority prisoner and a useful bargain chip. Second, I very doubt our current Supreme Leader is keen to sign your execution order. Third, you helped me escape. It’s enough to make a case, if you would like to join us—‘ Leia snorted, and he bit his lip before finishing, ‘—and even if you would rather not, helping an officer is a ground for a sentence alleviation.’ He shook his head again. ‘Why did you heal me if you thought I would have had you executed?’

Well, she hadn’t really thought so, for one. But that reply would open another can of worms.

‘We agreed to a ceasefire. And I already took another of your weapons. I feel pretty confident. Do you want it back?’

She didn’t need to look at Hux to know his confusion only deepened.

‘No, I—‘

‘You can make another one? I’m surprised you didn’t try to break the code to my bedroom and get the blasters.’

‘I thought about it.’ She wasn’t sure if he realised it was an admission, or if he thought she already knew everything thanks to the Force. ‘But it would require some artificial intelligence elements. I’d need to break the basic navigation and transmission devices down. I could assemble them again later, but it would take time. I decided strengthening the signal is a priority.’ He hesitated and the next words came quieter. ‘You don’t seem like an imminent danger. I know you could be, I don’t mean to be disrespect—’

‘I understand.’

‘If you want me to... to work on a different project, I will. I can make other things. Other small weapons. Traps in the docking bay, just in case. There’s quite a lot of fuel here and in the escape pods. Whatever you want.’ A defensiveness crept into his tone, like he would have tried to assure her he wasn’t wasting his time, that he was useful.

Leia didn’t care. But she could imagine who and what had ground this fear into him and this was a useful, if uncomfortable, thought.

She sent him a smile, a warmer one.

‘More bath bubbles? The citrus fragrance got a little boring.’

‘If you wish.’ He sounded completely serious and Leia barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes.

‘I’ll think about it. Could this transmission device really work?’ If so, then her plan of waiting for Lando’s forces needed changes.

‘You know already.’

She already _supposed_ it couldn’t. Hux must have assumed she was wasting her time roaming through his head. As if it could be a nice place.

‘I do. But I want you to say this aloud.' Leia knew he'd heard "Hold you accountable", allusion clear in every regime. But some part of her disliked the idea of playing an Emperor, so she added, keeping her voice light and amused, almost mocking: 'I don't mind listening to you if you're not announcing a slaughter. For a change.’ As the words left her lips she realised they were true. Damn. She shouldn’t tell him any truths.

Hux blinked. Hummed and tapped his fingers on the floor. Coughed.

‘The chances of reaching other populated systems are slim, but if anyone is searching for us or those bounty hunters, then perhaps they’re closer and—well, you seemed certain you would be able to defeat them... And we could just listen for a while, it’s possible to passively receive transmissions with those elements... The chances for getting signal strong enough are very low, I admit. But I need to try.’

This was true, she sensed. He _needed_ to try, yes, needed some semblance of action, of—the thought almost stole her breath—hope.

‘I know,’ her voice was too quiet, too intimate.

Leia sighed mentally, swore to be more careful with her words and leaned on the toolbox to ease her back. She sat next minutes in safe silence, drinking tea. Hux finally sipped some of his, too, before he, throwing her suspicious glances, went back to work.

‘What are you searching for?’ Leia asked, when Hux raised his head from cables and looked around the room.

A heavy sigh. ‘The Kuatian screwdriver head. Don’t bother, princess, I put it right there...’

Really. To assume she, the wife of Han Solo, the part of the Millennium Falcon’s crew, didn’t know what a Kuatian screwdriver looked like? Leia let her instincts guide her and ha, the proper tool levitated itself from the box. She smiled brightly, levitating it—it was pretty exhausting, to control such a small element—in his direction.

Hux reached to catch a good half a meter before him. It couldn’t be comfortable.

‘You could just throw it,’ he murmured, before loudly adding “thanks”.

Leia supposed she should be glad he feared her. She wasn’t. And so she spent next hour or so in the hangar, mostly watching Hux’s work—it wasn’t bad work, she had to admit, just a little... hopeless— sometimes helping him hold or mend some piece.

And finally, when he seemed to relax a little:

‘How are you going to strengthen the signal?’

‘I don’t want to bore you with the technicalities.’

Image of Han flashed before Leia’s eyes. She couldn’t help it, but she could push the memories deep down, behind an imaginary door. She closed it. Focused on the machinery and the tools, and the fluffy texture of the bathrobe.

‘Try me, General.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, P. beta-ed it for me, but then I decided to change some things, so - all mistakes are my own. 
> 
> Leia's tempted by the Dark Side and yet, perhaps, perhaps, accidentally, shows Hux the Light. :D Paradoxes everywhere.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A well-working ceasefire, again! They're even slowly starting to feel happy in each other's presence. Sometimes. Usually, they're too bewildered by themselves, each other and universe.

She had listened to him. That night and in the next days, when she had come to the hangar, helped him with the work. Her help was mostly contained to giving him tools, holding the parts or welding or wiring some smaller elements, but it was more effective than working alone. 

She had listened to him and knew some things about small-scale repairs and engineering—perhaps that should be expected, considering who had been her husband and considering she had served her years in the Rebellion, but Hux had just never thought _princess _Organa would bother. 

And she wasn’t like Snoke or his father, or her son, either flippant or demanding the impossible right now. Nor was she disinterested in experiments or widening the area of the theoretical knowledge. Granted, the current problem was a practical one, but Leia was asking a lot of questions and they weren’t all pragmatic. They also didn't involve the Order’s technologies much. He supposed she was going to steer some of their next conversations there—she needed some profit from all this boring, useless technology babbling he was, as usual, full of—but she had been... polite enough to not start from it. And she wasn’t punishing him when things didn’t work well the first time, when they needed to check different solutions.

She’d listened, spent time with and helped him. Hours of wandering the station’s corridors later, Hux still hadn’t any idea _why_. Why she didn’t punish him. Why she healed him. Why she had gotten angry at the sight of his bruises (and angry she had been; he knew the signs well enough.) Why she’d kept talking to him, and a long chain of other whys. 

Perhaps these were those famed royal and republican whims. Unpredictable. Useless. Unprofitable. Egoistic. Weak. She should have punished him. He’d created the weapon behind her back. She should have. Now he knew he could safely...

Hux stopped himself and almost laughed. Do what, exactly? She’d healed him with that _damn_ Force. She’d levitated that taser from underneath his hand. She’d basically admitted to staying in his head. She could do it all again.

She’d healed him. Neither Snoke or Ren had ever done so. They probably could, but... _General Organa_ survived a walk in the vacuum of space. Hux was pretty sure this was beyond Snoke’s abilities. Skywalkers’ blood was powerful, Vader was powerful, he’d heard it all his life. Ren was Vader’s grandson, but Leia was Vader’s daughter. In engineering and biology, repairing—healing—was more difficult than destroying.

In short, all evidence pointed to the conclusion that Leia might be more powerful than both Supreme Leaders. Or: differently powerful. Hux, not powerful at all, wasn’t going to check where the limits of _Vader’s daughter_ lay.

Laughter bubbled inside him. He pushed it back. He just needed to bide his time. Some occasion for... for something would surely arise.

And if not? If they managed to get a ship—fight or bribe someone for it—or if she managed to contact with their Jedi girl... Well, he would be no longer useful. Unless as a bargaining chip? But no, but Ren would laugh in the Resistance’s faces if they tried using him as a bargaining chip or a source of intel. Either way, he would be finished.

Hux gulped. Tried to steady himself. It was just the lack of stims and meds talking. Pessimistic, resigned thoughts, the first signs of the depressive spiral. There was no way the Order wouldn’t find them first. If Leia couldn’t get into Force-touch with the girl, then perhaps The Resistance was already wiped out, all the battles won, perhaps he would come back to _his _galaxy. 

He would take a small dose from the base’s stims’ the next day, it should help for defeatist thoughts. If he was going to use the chemical aid reasonably, he might survive a few weeks more, he was sure.

His damn mind threw some calculations at him. They looked pretty bad. It was obviously his fault for overusing medical help in the Order. He broke the procedures and now here he was, not being able to bear the consequences of his behaviour. Falling apart without a few damn pills. Weak. As always.

And why, really? Because he hadn’t been able to fulfil the Supreme Leader’s expectations and the Order’s needs, and his own obligations? Well, he shouldn’t be the general, then. He should content himself with being a captain at most. Just like his father had told him. Then, he would have had all the time in the world for some whims and weaknesses and wallowing in self-pity.

He definitely needed those stims. Stims, calming meds, something, anything to go back to himself. But if he took them now, he would have less later. And the princess would notice. Would ask or even worse, just check his mind. Realise what a useless, weak rat he was.

It shouldn’t matter, he told himself. She’d shown him she wasn’t going to hurt him either way. It shouldn’t matter what she thought about him. But it also wouldn’t be wise to throw away the illusions of one’s worth.

He glanced at the door. Blinked. He had come to the princess’ room. He wondered if he didn’t see it a little too often during his walks. He never planned his route, just wandered, musing, thinking, letting the tension ease... But still, the station wasn’t _so_ small, it could shelter more than a dozen people comfortably. And he kept coming back to Leia’s door. Or rather: there was the possibility he kept coming back to her door. 

Checking on her, perhaps. Or some feeble hope he was going to manage to break through them without alarming Leia and getting slammed into the wall.

Or another weakness. Hux felt more and more uneasy with the knowledge that there was no one else on the other side of his room’s walls. He was lying in his bed at nights, unable to sleep, thinking about those first years after Jakku, when people had been dying easily, and rooms had been getting more and more sparsely populated with every week. Empty bedrolls. His father’s shrug “well, it seems we’re going to eat bigger portions tonight!”. It was pretty absurd because even then he hadn’t had the room to himself and now the walls were thick enough to not let any sound out. Whether the room next to his was empty or not, it made no difference.

No difference, he repeated in his head. It was all just another side-effect of withdrawal. No difference. The names of the dead, his name, princess’ rooms, her listening and his “whys”—no difference.

He repeated it a few times to himself, but the names still seemed like a great weight on his tongue, pressing it flat, pressing it thin.

Carefully maintained, self-sustaining cosmic bodies tended to have a healthy, balanced ecosystem. This healthy ecosystem demanded the existence of insects. Insects tended to fly, buzz and be irritating. 

Leia, having lived on planets, was able to ignore it, but Hux seemed to be baffled by them. Every time they were outside—if Leia was spending time in the hangar, helping him with the parts, he could spend an hour with her out in the fresh air—and Leia forced him to do the “terribly unhygienic thing” of sitting on the grass, he ended up watching beetles and ants with wonder and suspicion in his eyes. Perhaps he expected all beetles to be as venomous as the one which had killed his father.

Once or twice he allowed them to climb on him and watched them closer. Leia had waited for the moment when he would crush or vivisect them, cut away their legs and wings—like a cruel child, a curious scientist, a man who destroyed a whole planetary system—but to her surprise, he hadn’t. What seemingly interested him was the insects' work and social structure. And what he felt when they marched on his palm, their little wings and legs scraping at his skin lightly. 

In a way, Leia thought, Hux was cataloguing his own impressions. As far as she knew, he’d spent time on planets as a part of war training mostly—if he wondered about insects then, it was probably in a logistical way. Illnesses they might bring, medicaments, anti-mosquito measures.

She wondered if he’d ever had so much free time on his hands as now. 

‘Would you like to make the whole galaxy into an anthill? 

He looked at her from the anthill. He had observed it for a good half an hour.

‘The perfect effectiveness of the insects is known to me. It’s marvellous and yes, I think we might learn from them. They know their role and place and do everything to fulfil their duty. Sacrifice everything for the swarm. But such a structure is impossible for beings of... more complicated intelligence. We have a lot of useless things, emotions and ideas inside our brains.’ He shook his head. ‘The Order is inspired by the organised and effective structure of the insects’ swarms, but with the necessary... allowances.’

‘Will you try to test what happens when a cataclysm strikes at the structure?’

‘You mean... destroying the anthill?’ He looked surprised. ‘There’s no shortage of research about insects’ reactions when their nest is destroyed. Ants are good for the balance of the ecosystem. Why would I upset it?’

_Because you shot at Hosnian Prime._ Leia bit her tongue, but couldn’t stop her thoughts. _You shot at Hosnian Prime and now you don’t want to upset the ecosystem and hurt a few insects?_

‘There’s a snail here,’ she said instead. ‘Do you want to take a look?’ 

It sounded absurd and sarcastic to her own ears. Hux was more than thirty. He had created breakthrough technologies. What could interest him in a snail? He probably knew everything about the basic biology of all manner of creatures.

He didn’t move, just cocked his head to the left. 

‘I saw a dragonfly today earlier,’ he said, sounding almost dreamy. Or rather: detached. ‘It was my first since Arkanis. There were probably some in the planets I stationed on, I just didn’t notice them. But I noticed it here.’

She didn’t know how to reply. ‘Did you like it?’

‘It was... conventionally pretty, I think. Seemed pretty to me, too. And its wings were very interesting from an aerodynamics point of view. A lot of the best engineering projects were inspired by nature. Perhaps... I forgot about it.’

Leia’s heart sank. ‘So when we are outside, you’re thinking about creating new superweapons?’

‘Not weapons necessarily. But I feel inspired and I haven’t in a long time. I just... think freely. Have this space in my head. It’s empty and one can create... Find things there. Like cosmos. In a way. Metaphorically. It’s just a feeling.’ He swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know to express it precisely, I shouldn’t bother you with my—’

‘You’re inspired.‘ Leia tried not to feel guilty that she was the one who insisted he should go outside more. Tried to tell herself he wasn’t inventing new forms of mass murder, only... ‘Anything useful for our situation here?’

He nodded.

‘The traps in the bay, how to make them more effective. And I was thinking of another small weapon, based on the bees. It could fly and be controlled by a remote. To attack from the distance.’ He tensed. ‘It’s all for defending _us_. I still think the first party to come here will be another pack of bounty hunters. But I’ve had no ideas about the communication device. Nothing we could make with the pieces we have. I’m sorry,’ he added quickly, and Leia realised she had scared—threatened—him again. ‘The snail. You want me to look at it?’

It felt hopeless, all of sudden. Perhaps she should be happy he treated her like his commanders, constantly expecting fury and punishment. It made him obedient, after all. But it felt worse and worse, with every passing day, every hour spent in the relative peace of the hangar, them working on different parts, Hux talking about projects and mechanics. With every tea they’d drunk. With every damn bath reminding her Hux had created those bubbles, just because she asked. Thinking it had been done just out of fear somehow didn’t feel right. Who she was, some damn Tarkin, to rule through terror?

‘It’s not an order,’ she tried. ‘I just thought you might be interested.’ What weapon could be inspired by snails? Hopefully none.

Hux hummed, walked to her and dutifully crouched over the snail. Leia had the feeling he was waiting for her to walk away, so he could safety went back to observing ants. 

The ants he apparently valued—cared for—so much more than the whole Hosnian system.

‘I think I really like this one.’

The tea. Leia smiled. She’d noticed already. Or perhaps the Force had told her this.

‘I know. This and the early spring one, from Gatalanta.’

Hux nodded. He fell into silence for a moment. Then, hesitantly:

‘The Supreme Leader likes the tea, too.’

Aha. This was a part of their game. An attempt at hurting her. And the punch landed. Every mention of Ben cut Leia deeply. Every mention of Ben opened the chasm of questions: what she had done wrong, was she the one responsible? Was it the curse of Vader’s blood, or perhaps just her mistakes, and which of those options were worse... She was just accustomed to closing the mental door before this flood. She couldn’t let anybody see her falter. Hux especially.

‘Which one?’ Her voice was calm, nonchalant even. Good.

Little Ben had liked his tea with sugar and milk. The last time she’d seen him drinking it—it was in Luke’s Academy, and the realisation broke her heart—he had been still drinking it with milk. 

‘The tarine one. Strong. Darker than the coffee in our cantina.’

She shouldn’t be surprised, perhaps. After all, Ben had cut off everything which connected him with his family, with her, with them. Why not the milk, which Luke had loved and put in everything.

But still, it—touched her. The thought she couldn’t name her son’s favourite food or make his favourite drink any longer. That if she ever met him again, it would be like meeting a stranger. She would have to ask even about the way he’d like to take his tea.

Han had met with him already. And it had ended in the worst way possible. But Han had at least had looked into his son’s eyes. Leia might die in some cosmic battle or bombing without even that. She had come close to it on D’Qar. The soldiers would have just shot her and others and her own son wouldn’t grace her with one look straight into her eyes. Without one sight of his face. She would have died with the memory of a face that was no longer his--a whole five years younger and known only from the holos sent sometimes by Luke. Coloured in blue. Like a ghost.

‘But he doesn’t care about the planet or plantation of origin. He drinks it so strong it probably doesn’t matter,’ Hux continued, now tensed. 

Leia wondered if this wasn’t a part of his game, too. Perhaps he’d noticed she hadn’t liked him afraid and used it now to mellow her mood. Just after he had purposefully spoiled it. Little, clever rat.

The chasm in Leia widened, tempting her to ask more. If it was destined for her to die without looking her son into eyes, let her at least get to know something about him, about current him. Hux could probably tell her so much—everything, the smallest details of his daily life. More than Rey or Finn.

He might tell her everything about how her son tortured his subjects and prisoners. How he’d knelt before Snoke, alongside with Hux. How he murdered. Leia wasn’t delusional. Hux might be nice to her out of fear and lack of other options of getting human contact, but he would grab the first chance to break her. See her suffer. Get some piece of information.

It wasn’t like she would do any different. But it would not do for her to fall right into this trap, no matter how much her heart ached. Her heart had ached for many things in her life, many of them lost forever. She knew how to bear it.

So she said: “thank you for the valuable piece of the intelligence” and let the thought of accidentally betraying the Order gnaw at Hux’s mind. 

A beetle. Hard, shiny, buzzing, _tickling_, because it was stupid enough to wander aimlessly along Hux foot.

The princess would probably get angry if he killed it. She acted like she’d expected him to start torturing insects and birds at any moment – and like it’d worry her. And he definitely didn’t want to give her any reasons to worry, check his actions more closely or punish him. No hurting beetles, flies and ants it was, then. 

Not that he felt any particular strong desire to do. There was no shortage of the insects’ corpses in the station to dissect and take inspiration from. Such short-lived things (like humans to other races, like humans to stars, like stars to...).

And as for his pleasure, hurting insects, animals or even children rarely brought him much of it. What pleased him was taking away this foolish, false, vicious thing called “hope”, crushing people’s souls, seeing their fear and despair, smiling from the height of his recognised superiority... Animals were limited to fear. They lacked self-reflection, they could never realise who it was who broke, hurt and killed them, could never quite see their doom coming and beg Hux for mercy. And children would just either not believe the seriousness of the situation or accept it and make a world around it, treating it like normal. It was all... too mechanical for Hux’s tastes. Soulless. Nothing nice in exercising one’s power, when the other side lacks the capability to recognise you as their better.

Also, hurting children reminded him of his father.

From all beings on this station, the only one worth the effort to play with was Leia, but she was outside Hux’s reach for now, save for a sudden stroke of his technological genius, so he could only shake the beetle out of his foot—it flew away with even more irritating buzzing—and console himself with fantasying weapons’ designs or future of the galaxy after the Order’s righteous victory.

He was sure he’d be able to find a place for the princess—for the spark of hope dying in her eyes—in both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potboy - <3 <3 <3. All people who comment - biiiiillion hearts, too. <3 <3 <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, well, one last chapter before it officially will become an AU and they both - officially become dead in canon. :D (laughing through tears, this it ;)).
> 
> I'm sorry I disappeared for a time, it's just - a lot. ;) And Christmas season is, oh my, so busy. 
> 
> But in I meantime, I managed to fulfill my obligations for SWRares and even wrote a treat for it! And my assignment's fic is a Leia/Hux, too (treat is about Maratelle Hux/Hux's mother), in case you're interested. Just saying, because (le music!) it's a final countdown. 
> 
> Aaand thanks to P. who always helps me with grammar.

‘Perhaps we could try cooking something. It’s a shame to waste all of these ingredients.’ Leia’s fingers were tapping rhythmically at the table in the common room. ‘It’s a human-created moon. I’m sure there’s no lethally poisonous plants here.‘

‘You don’t even know how to cook.’ It always felt good to throw it at her. And, honestly, Hux wasn’t sure if his stomach could take traditional food.

‘I can learn. Most of the greens can be eaten raw. And usually, you just put things into the pot, fill it with water, warm them and wait until they become soft. Simple.’

Hux laughed. It wasn’t like he’d ever made his own dishes, either – or at least not in a long time, and he doubted those scraps-made things his first unit had taught him to make could be called proper cuisine – but somehow her nonchalance got him.

‘Indeed, at your age the softness of the dishes is probably becoming the important aspect.’

‘My teeth are in perfect condition. I’d think someone with the technology to create destroyers’ should know about the wonders of dentistry...?’

‘We do. A very good reason why so many parents are willing to put their children into our care: we give them proper medical attention. Dentistry. Bacta. Surgeries. Whatever they need. It’s unthinkable luxury in many corners of the galaxy, _Princess_. I saw people not much more than half of your age without some teeth already.’

‘You think me either delusional or stupid, if you think I don’t know—‘

‘Well, it’s not like you _did _something about it, is it? Perhaps “cruel” is a better word. Or “indifferent”.’

‘We—The Senate, The Republic—did try—‘

But Hux had tasted blood and wasn’t going to let go. ‘Apparently not hard enough.’

Leia sighed. ‘It’s not so easy. There’re only so many _resources_—and there’s always the matter of getting the representatives to agree upon them, and you couldn’t just force them—‘

‘Why not?’

‘Because you would take away their freedom and the foundation of democracy. Right.’ Her smile was bitter. ‘I’m aware it’s not an important value for you.’

He sipped his tea. It was an easy battle, one they’d held so many times in the Order during their ideological meetings, between self-criticism and sharing of your treacherous doubts. The words felt easy on his tongue, mixed with the taste of tea.

‘So you sacrificed their well-being—their lives—for your values and ideas? Why, Princess, I have the impression it’s exactly that “monstrous, unthinkable crime” you’re accusing me, the Order and the Empire of.’ Leia became white. Good. ‘What’s the difference for beings if they die in an explosion or by negligence and hunger? Except that death by hunger is longer and more painful. Choosing the thousand over the million is still a sacrifice and a murder. Lack of action is a choice, too. Usually the most monstrous one, but soothing for one’s ego. And oh, Princess, did I see the results of yours choices! Women so starved they didn’t have milk for their children. Children who could stomach the food no more, couldn’t produce the acid to digest it. Beings with their flesh so rotten from diseases it felt like jelly. You could poke a hole in them with just your finger. Cuts and bruises on slaves’ and lower-wage workers’ backs. I saw a lot of beings you deemed less important than your precious democracy.’

And that was why the Order, his teachers had explained during lessons, wasn’t about the one’s ego, whims, conscience and opinions, but about the good of the whole. Individuals could only be protected if the community was strong enough to offer them protection and to do so, the community needed power. Whether he genuinely believed it had never really mattered. He needed to force his thoughts to _believe in it_, repeat it constantly. After all, they had mindreaders in their ranks.

Leia recovered quickly. ‘You cooperate with criminals and slavers, and abandon those deemed not useful enough. But you think it’s necessary, to bring the better future for all, of course. You think,’ she said, slowly, her fingers tight on the mug, but her voice quiet, calm and almost soft, ‘your choices aren’t your own, your responsibility isn’t yours, but the Order’s and the History’s, and Necessity’s, and even Logic and Mathematics, and therefore beyond moral judgement? All, you included, are just tools of the cause.’

‘Of the common good,’ he replied, automatically. ‘The lives of the people. The better future.’

‘This is your absolution.’

‘I don’t need—‘

‘I understand.’ She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath. ‘I understand. I was raised a princess, as you kindly remind me. I got a lot of lessons about ideologies, political systems, economics structures, historical, theoretical... You’re not the first one to use this mindset.’

‘Surely the good, safe and fair life isn’t a new dream,’ he snarled. ‘I’m not delusional.’

‘But you’re tired.’ Leia seemed calmed, now, and gentler. Whatever wound he’d managed to open with his rant, she already hid it. ‘We will spend more days here. Plenty of time to talk about the details of our shared dream of a good, safe and fair galaxy.’

A picnic. Just when Hux was sure nothing Her Highness did might surprise him anymore.

She seemed happy that morning. Radiant, in a way. She wore her dress, the one she had had with her on the bounty hunter’s ship, not the station’s uniform. She hummed some melody Hux didn’t recognise.

Yet he felt himself attuning to her despite his will—despite his knowledge that he shouldn’t. She was _the_ enemy of the Order. Of any order in general. And the whole picnic idea only proved it further.

’We will spend a day outside. You need this. An hour or two every few days is not enough.’

‘Eating outside without sanitary and disinfectant equipment is terribly unhygienic.’

Leia rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t know what I expected. You’re thin, pale and easily bruised, of course your immune system is in a shambles. This is exactly what you get when you spend your life on ships. Another reason to go outside, when you have a chance.’ She reached to him, but stopped when he flinched. ‘You won’t die from it. It’s a safely-formed habitat. If the worst come, we have bacta. Finn didn’t die from taking a step outside—’

‘Finn?’

‘Your escaped stormtrooper.’

It still hurt. Just like the first day. A defect in the program, Ren rubbing it in his face, a defect in the _new_ program, created by Hux personally. A defect in their—his—machine. His responsibility.

A defect in him, like the whole fiasco with Starkiller or D’Qar. He should have done better. Must do better in the future. He must examine the issue and burn it down. Or else his grand words from the previous day had been just empty trinkets, rhetorical devices and he and the princess, he and the Republic had been no different.

Except the Republic had worse weapons.

‘He had gone through standard acclimatisation and an immunology boosting procedure before being dispatched to the mission squad. And that’s not his name.’

‘FN-something wasn’t, either. He likes this one.’

‘Did he choose it?’

The hesitation in her face told him “no”, even before Leia sighed and admitted it aloud. Apparently, to make things irrationally worse, it had been picked by Dameron. Leia added “Finn” was welcomed to change it and pick another one if he wanted. Hux snarled something about republican chaos—how she was going to win a war if her soldiers were to change the form of address at any given moment, like, in the middle of the battle for example—and she answered with some pretty speech about absurd argumentation. Finn had been welcomed to pick his name. He had chosen to stay with the one given to him by Poe. He didn’t seem to want to change it every hour. End of the matter. Hux should think about reality, not only theories, sometimes. It would make him _a lot_ better general.

That hurt. He sometimes forgot how well Rebels could hit. But he had some teeth, too.

‘My father always said so.’

Leia turned her head down, fixed her gaze on the counter. Put some rations and dried out snacks into the container. Hux was pretty sure it was already full and the blankets she was now folding were folded perfectly already.

When she finally spoke, her voice seemed suspended between gentleness and sarcasm, trailing off and disappearing without the trace in the air.

‘It would also make you a lot worse engineer. And since I need a plumber, not a soldier right now...’

Convincing Hux he could actually do so much as put his foot in the water was a comically difficult task—he insisted someone should have stayed with their “picnic equipment”. Some danger might appear out of thin air. Stranger things happened in “the wilderness”. Perhaps the years in space had left his immune system even weaker than Leia—or The Resistance’s sources—thought.

Eventually, she shrugged, took off her dress, tightened her braids, went into the water and start swimming. Or more like: floating on her back, lazily. This apparently had convinced Hux the water really wasn’t poisonous or full of traps, beasts and monsters.

He was swimming like he was exercising under an instructor’s eyes, from one shore to another, motions fast, effective, automatic. She didn’t mind, the lake was big enough for them both. 

The sky, dotted with asteroids from the belt, had a shade of blue which reminded her of Alderaanian springs. So bright and pale it was almost grey. Just a few clouds in it, white and puffy. More like the decor for a holofilm than a part of the ecosystem. They moved pretty fast, but the wind at ground level seemed mostly pleasant. Perfect for getting tuned with herself and the universe. The water helped, too. For one, it was soothing. For second, floating on it didn’t task Leia’s spine as much as sitting still did.

Leia would spend hours everyday here, if not for the fact that leaving Hux without supervision in the base for so long seemed unwise. In some struck of genius, he might break the code to her room finally.

Not that he seemed particularly interested in doing so. When the routes of his marches brought him under her door, Leia sensed mostly exhaustion and some distant, unspecific longing. In theory, it might be a longing to get the blasters and kill her, but the Force didn’t seemed alarmed near him. For a general, Hux easily slipped into the role of someone taking orders. Probably because of the years of working with Supreme Leaders.

But there was a difference between deciding Hux wasn’t going to slit her throat and giving him opportunities to use his engineering skills. He had already conceived a weapon. Admitted to planning to the computer probe, too. Leia was controlling him by helping him in the hangar, but she wouldn’t necessarily notice if he hid some parts from her and she didn’t like relying on the Force to always warn her.

So, if she called her need to meditate over the lake a “picnic” today and forced Hux to spend the day—the terror!—outside, too, well, she was the one with the blasters. She could. She had the whim. The day was pretty.

And Hux hadn’t mentioned fear yesterday.

He’d lashed out at her with the mention of galactic poverty—the Republic’s indifference—and no matter how simplified and misguided his vision was, she’d sensed its honesty. And thanks to the royal education he liked to mock so much, she could imagine how caring about the Rims had led to the Hosnian Cataclysm. It was a chilling, ruthless, very wrong logic, one which always demanded new and newer sacrifices, because the ones already made had never proved to be enough. But her childhood lessons, cold and philosophical, told her it all might come from the desperate hunger. For, let’s say, justice.

With hunger, hope always came. Leia hated it, hated it so much, but now she was able to admit that in the Force that damn murderer was radiating hope, broken into million shards, and shining all the more for it. And this hope was leading him straight into darkness.

But the destruction of the Hosnian was a terrible crime, one _she_ or the Rebellion would have never done. The atrocity was the biggest in a long line of historical atrocities. It was a source of the suffering which Leia still felt whatever she opened herself, purposefully or not, to the voice of the whole galaxy. And had Hux stopped after Hosnian system? No, he and the Order (_under Ben’s orders_…) had razed city after city, planet after planet, until their resources spread so thin and the resistance grew so strong they needed to stop and sit to negotiations, the war coming into a cold phase again.

It wasn’t done for power for the sake of power.

But that made no difference to the dead.

She knew her doubts were about Ben, maybe only, maybe also. _Hux isn’t him_, Leia repeated to herself. _Hux isn’t Ben, you can’t save your son by helping him_.

But Hux wasn’t Tarkin or Vader either. She could share something pretty with him, a day under the sky, carefree laughter. Something outside of the logic of a war. Even if he, bright with anger now—a flame in the calm, balanced, designed Force of the moon—immediately brought the logic of a war to the table.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm... alive, i guess? I breathe, right?
> 
> So, er, I'm so sorry, but TROS and finally knowing everything I knew would happen (and I was probably the bleakest person on tumblr, like "it'll be very, very bad, you'll see,. full Eastern European stereotype!) actually happening just - broke me. I guess I'm still in a middle of my snail-slow motion nervous breakdown, and is just - well, let's say I feel hysterically bad. ;) Not about this becoming AU, because it's just a fic, obviously, though. And since P. was so nice and already beta-ed this in December, then no matter what will happen, I think now, when I have a glimpse of willpower, I should post it. ;) Perhaps even manage to reply to comments this weekends, but I can't promise - well, anything, currently.
> 
> I edited it and edited, but their running in circles discussion didn't want to get shorter. Perhaps one day I'll cut some more, but really, considering what Hollywood now's doing (patching you films after release!) I - well. I feel it's edited well enough.

It was nice to swim _again_. Which was exactly the nostalgia Hux had tried to avoid. He’d begun enjoying swimming years after Arkanis because the water had brought the memories of home. A bad reason then; even worse now.

He should be thinking about defeating general Organa and escaping from this cosmic body, however it was classified. The Order was the galaxy’s future, his future. He shouldn’t, couldn’t, dwell on the past. And the princess was the past—old, privileged oligarchy, sucking the blood of the Rims, hindering their progress and prosperity and dressing it all in pretty words about freedom.

Ha. The Order demanded freedom from hunger, then. His teachers, including his father, had repeated this during every ideological lesson. But this one, unlike many other lines, even now struck Hux as true.

Freedom from poverty, which made people sell themselves and all those pretty rights the Rebels liked to talk about. And who had destroyed the only government able to protect the rights of the weak? Who had allowed, who had _caused_ everything which was happening now, everything Hux had witnessed, what was done to him and what he did, everything he’d read about in the reports, everything he was forced to coldly _use_? The whole Empire down and for what? To bring back the system which had been reasonable enough to see it own flaws and overturn itself, legally?

There had been a lot of holos on the hate-academies of his childhood, of prominent Rebels and Imperials both. Leia, of course, too, very young and very pretty. Hux was sure a lot of cadets and teachers had spent their nights fantasying about brave, beautiful Imperial martyrs sucking them off in the trenches of the great war. Or young pretty Rebels brought to their knees or bringing them to their knees, offering mercy and nice governmental jobs, freeing them from the hunger of those first few years—and even later there had been still a lot of things to be freed of.

Hux should have known. He’d had those fantasies, too, not of all of them erotic in nature. He supposed it was an offshoot of his contempt of his father. Every time Brendol had been the one conducting the hate séances, Armitage’d spat insults thinking of him.

His father probably had known. He probably had also known Armitage’s half-wished hopes, sometimes, for those terrible Rebels to find them, so it would have all ended and he and father could go back home.

He’d realised later such hopes had been stupid. The Rebels would have killed them all, his father especially. And they hadn’t come, because they hadn’t cared, they hadn’t bothered with checking the well-being of the planets in the Rims, so they couldn’t find them or stop the rightful return of the legal government. It had been all like his teachers had said. The Rebels hadn’t cared about anything and anyone, even their own comrades, left to rot. First, leave your soldiers to beg on the streets, give them some charity funds once in a while to make sure they still love you, and then come back to them with a royal smile and recruit them to your army: die for me, now, and at least you’ll get some food rations.

Hux wouldn’t put it past the princess to play it purposefully, raising tensions between the Centrists and the Populists, stubbornly demanding benefits for members of the Rebellion only, refusing any compromise which would take post-Imperial soldiers into account, too... It was always easy to defend ideological purity, when you weren’t the hungry one.

_Nostalgia_, Hux snarled in his thoughts. _Thoughts, but no action. You’re just doing what Leia’s wants you to and covering this fact by fuming with anger and old speeches. And why would you recall all of general Organa’s crimes_—now, the voice in his thoughts sounded viciously—_if_ _not because your resolve is failing? You’re fooling yourself. Trying to fool us. Betraying the Order. Do you think of the princess as your superior, now? See yourself as her humble servant, like some of the cadets and teachers in those fantasies you _accidentally_ just brought up? _

He gritted his teeth. He was angry, yes, and he was getting angrier and angrier with every passing thought, but he was also pretty sure the princess was able to kill him even without the blasters—she wasn’t so stupid to bring any weapon with her to leave ashore, when he could just grab it—so yes, he was pushing his anger into the physical effort of swimming to avoid acting recklessly on it, yesyesyes, exactly like with his father.

Focus. On. Moving. Your. Muscles. On the flow of water over your body. The warmth of the sun. Don’t think. It’s a spiral. A withdrawal symptom. Or perhaps a side-effect of being alone. Remember to correct this pack-dependence in the training program when you come back to the Order.

They probably had already replaced him. Hux would fight, then, come back and fight his way back to the top. And make sure those who betrayed him—oh, he already had come up with the names to check—were disposed of, slowly. All of them. And their allies, too. Right before their eyes.

Planning the details of his investigation calmed him down. With the peace came the realisation he’d been swimming more than an hour already, in a pretty extensive, high-energy cost way. Under the influence of the asteroid’s atmosphere.

He crashed so hard he thought for a second he might drown in this stupid pond. But it passed quickly and Hux swam to the shore on his back, feeling all spoiled and lazy.

He dressed up in one of this station’s uniforms, put the underwear in the sun to dry it, and almost completely dried his hair, before Leia joined him at this picnic place of hers. He wordlessly gave her a fresh towel. 

She ignored his bad mood. ‘I hoped we could talk. About our ideological differences.’ 

Now, that was rich. She wanted them to play Republican Senate?

‘It’s too late for talking, don’t you think?’

‘There was a time I believed so. But we’re not in the trenches right now. We’re having a picnic in the middle of nowhere. What’s left but talking?’

She put her dress on her, sat on the blanket and let her hair free from the tight braid she wore for swimming. Shook her head. The droplets splashed on Hux, but he almost didn’t notice, taken by the view.

He hadn’t seen hair so long in years, if ever—it wouldn’t have been practical for servants in the kitchen. Rae had had longer hair than had been allowed, but still a lot shorter than this. He hadn’t realised how splendidly, completely impractical Leia’s hair was. Until now she’d been wearing it braided. And now, to see it, so long, and thick, just—

He forced his thoughts to flow in a different direction. To think she had been commanding battles with _this_. Spending time to make those complicated braids, at war. Royal whims, backing every opinion of his teachers, but Hux must admit he felt mostly... disarmed. It was something straight from fairy tales.

She shot him a glance. ‘Silence? Well, you shot the whole planetary system without any attempt at negotiations, I shouldn’t be surprised. Try to come up with something, though. I’m interested.’

‘Why?’

‘The answer for you? I have a whim.’ Leia sighed; the next words had the cadence of a speech. ‘There was also a time I believe the war could only end when we shot the last stormtrooper. And now, when the last stormtrooper is my son, well—nobody can accuse me of being a hypocrite and stopping my fight. But it makes one wonder, if perhaps... that strategy... didn’t have some flaws. Something in your ideology must make some sense to him.’

Hux’s anger boiled to the point when laughing seemed like only option. This, or actually strangling Leia and he doubted she would let him. Of course it was about her son. Her royal son finding something interesting in the babbling from Unknown Regions.

Laughter didn’t help, so sitting down, Hux was took a relaxation spice in his hand. Eyed it suspiciously. Leia wanting to talk politics was a perfect reason to finally take a chemical help and she apparently agreed if she’d packed it... But he hesitated now; it was a narcotic, not a medicine, and while a high-quality one, it could have some side-effects. Of course, the sooner he would check what those side-effects were, the better, so...

This station—Leia—seemed to take away his ability to make _any_ decision.

‘I want a shot, too.’ The princess gestured at the spice. ‘Talking is not the part of the Senate I miss.’

‘Typical. Core royalty stealing a limited resource from the Rims’ war orphans.’

‘This was irony!’ Leia fell on her back, laughing, her hair splashed water on Hux again. ‘Yes, exactly. I, the Senate, am putting a tax on spice.’ She was smiling, really smiling, and it was so different than the all the previous evenings over tea, with her carefully poised face. ‘How high do you think it should be? The Order is one of the main producers and sellers, after all.’

‘Necessity.’

‘To what end? Now, you mostly spend your wealth on weapons and military training. You claim you want to help the Rims. Tell me how. Infrastructure investments, health care, social programmes, main transport routes, resources’ on every planet, unemployment rates, the education chains, how to allocate the resources, including social ones, especially being a central government and therefore having some reaction inertia and being detached from your citizens... If you have some good ideas, breakthrough political technologies, I’m not going to disregard them.’

‘Aha. Good princess listening to her low-class adviser. A shame I don’t believe you.’

‘Try me, General.’

A very obvious move. But she _had_ listened to his technical explanations. So, he divided the spice evenly and reached to offer it to Leia, careful to not touch her hair. He couldn’t quite believe it was real.

’Fifty percent? My, my, you’re a pretty harsh tax-maker.’

‘I included the bribes. It’s the illegal stuff, after all.’

‘Not after I, the Senate, taxed it.’

Her good mood was infectious. Hux felt his own lips rising.

‘I included the costs of lobbying for the legalisation, too.’

Leia shook her head. She shuddered when she touched the wet hair, sighed, reached for the towel.

‘Which of our Senators was taking so much—’

‘Scandalous, isn’t it? The previous head of the Populist party. He could stop any attempts of the central government to push legislation on all of the systems. Then, one only needed to lobby on a planetary level, and it’s much cheaper.’

‘Hars’mm? I knew he was in your pocket. You didn’t warn him to leave Hosnian Prime because he took too much...?’

‘We didn’t warn most of our agents. They outlived their usefulness.’

‘So those few survivors which became our next government aren’t all yours? I thought, with Carise as the new proposed head—‘

‘I haven’t even digested this spice yet and you’re trying to pry intel from me?’

Leia made a move between shrugging and rolling her arms. She was braiding her hair, now, in a sort of the bun, to get under the towel. Hux didn’t even know how he recognised the whole procedure. Perhaps his father’s wife or his mother, or some other servant girl had done something similar.

He wanted to offer his help. He didn’t. He almost regretted it.

‘So, what’s your vision of the galactic government?’ asked Leia. ‘Another Empire, just under a different name?’

‘No. The Empire didn’t work, you’re right about that. The distances made it impossible for the government to be flexible enough and thinking in centralistic terms is what destroyed the Rim in the first place.’

‘But you want to create a single strong government.’

‘Mhm.’ The spice started to work, Hux felt the typical lightheadness of its first rush. ‘But a moving one, like the _Supremacy_, so it could see how the funds are spent for itself. And with the heads... representatives from every system. Like now with the heads of our military.’

‘They’re only ceremonial. You have the Supreme Leader giving ultimate orders.’

‘It’s temporary. One needs a clear chain of command in war.’

‘And after?’

‘There would be a civilian council alongside a military one. The systems would get some manner of choosing their representatives.’

‘And this is different from the Republic how?’

‘The government would have real power and would... make the decisions and create the law, while other representatives would have more of an advisory role. Like in the Imperial Senate. But without the Empire’s level of micromanagement. Just... making some standards.’ He wasn’t quite sure which ones, though. Until now, the First Order had just taken money and resources, and left rest of the governing to the local bodies; but if they wanted to bring true stability that would, indeed, not be enough.’ ‘Ensuring planets and systems would follow them. This is why we need a big army. As enforcers of the rules. Guardians of peace and unity.’

‘And from who you want to defend them? From your own citizens, if they dare to dislike your decisions?’

Leia was eating the pre-prepared rations in the form of a sandwich and for now managed to not let even one crumb fall on her dress. Hux, in his spice-inducted state, was impressed. Unlike all the bees, flies, ants and other insects, buzzing around them. They, he supposed, were rather disappointed in the princess’ elegance.

‘There are always those who want to use the citizens as tools for their own interests, starting fires.’

There were so many of these little creatures here. Amazing. So much life, he thought dimly, even on such a little cosmic body. Even in this one lake. Here, in this one clearing, around them. So much life.

He thought about the planets he’d destroyed and some part of him shivered.

‘The one starting the fires recently, with the help of the criminals, slavers and drug dealers, has been the First Order.’

‘It’s necessary. It’s not like your Rebellion shrink away from cooperating with—’

‘When will it stop being necessary? You already won, right? And the first thing you did was go on a spree of destroying civilisations.’

‘We didn’t win. There’s still you. Your party.’

Leia snorted. She was so full of energy, now, gesturing widely. Touching Hux, almost. He told himself he didn’t wish she would. He told himself it was another symptom of her royal, egoistic thinking. Taking the whole blanket for herself. The bad republican form, his teachers had told him, shows itself in every little detail.

One’s discipline shines in every detail, too. Drinking coffee, eating well, spending your free time usefully, ironing your uniform. Showering, instead of wasting resources on baths. Keeping your hair short.

‘And you need the whole army, drug cartels, smugglers and the net of spies to stop one woman? Boy, there always will be some dissent, even under perfect rule. You will need your Supreme Leaders forever, and they will forever crush your windpipe on a whim.’

It was an obvious trick, trying to break his loyalty via appealing to his personal interests. Under the influence of spice, it didn’t seem important enough to throw it back at her. Hux suspected Leia mentioned it only because she took the spice, too. She avoided any mention of her son normally.

‘You have an army of your own. No strong government can allow private armies to roam through the state. It was your Republic’s weaknesses.’

‘You would prefer if we stopped you?’

‘It’s not a preference, it’s a statement of fact. Your Republic could react stronger, years ago. It didn’t. We used this blunder, but we would have managed without it. We are well-prepared. And if it hadn’t made such obvious mistakes like allowing our or your armies to grow and weaken the official structure, the Republican government might even been a decent government and not needed to be replaced.’

Hux was answering automatically, his thoughts still—such a foolishness!—concerned with the how damn long that hair, now under the towel, was. He couldn’t stop imagining it, how its weight felt, how it was when it fell down one’s spine. Tickling, probably. Perhaps after some time one stopped noticing it.

‘Like you would ever let us govern.’ Leia laughed bitterly. ‘You’re prepared to fight, true. But to rule? You still didn’t even tell me how precisely you’d like to help the Rims. Centralised funds and the wealth redistribution? In which form? Solidarity taxes? Investment’ programs? We tried all of those. The Old Republic tried, too. But it was impossible for the Senate to decide which school in which city on which planet should get the funds. It’s just... too much for any governing body to take. You've just admitted it. The central galactic government can never help, if it doesn’t cooperate closely with the locals. And so, why not to allow said locals some form of self-governance?’

Hux, who had been constantly juggling technological projects, and for a few years supervising the Starkiller base and Finalizer both, agreed. He’d needed to delegate some duties, even though he still checked on his administrators sometimes; after all, the Order’s plots killed more of the higher officers than Leia’s little band. He would expect governing the galaxy to demand even more delegation of duty—and he suddenly realised he wasn’t sure if old Imperials knew it, too. For all the ideological “we are better” speeches, they seemed to be dreaming of a carbon copy of their old Empire.

Not that he was going to admit it. The old Imperials were to be purged whatever the First Order decided. They didn’t matter.

‘That’s what our education program is for. We offer children free educational paths. In return, they would have to serve time in the Order’s—in the galaxy’s administration service. They would be sent on missions to the galactic regions, as teachers, doctors or engineers…’

‘But now you’re making soldiers from those children. No teachers or healers.’

‘How many schools were opened by the Rebellion? After our victory, we will have more resources to develop other branches of the program. We have some healers and teachers. And a lot of engineers.’ He smiled. ‘_I_ got the Order’s education.’

‘And you’re making weapons.’

‘War demands. Once we win—‘

‘Your army will be reduced?’ Leia seemed grimly amused.

‘Hells, no. We need something to control and check upon local governments. Punish them, if needed.’

‘So it’s all about fear, ultimately?’

He had disappointed her, somehow. Why would he care about disappointing her?

‘No, about authority. You did the same, with this Resistance of yours.’ He felt strangely desperate, like he wanted her to understand. ‘A government which can’t protect itself can’t protect its citizens, too, and such government doesn’t deserve to rule. Without the power, the government is useless. Like in the Old Republic.’

‘What can you know about the Old Republic?’

His anger returned, as much as spice in his veins could allow. What was she thinking, that her being adopted by the Old Republic corrupted elites gives her some hidden, trans-genetic insight into its workings?

‘The same as you, actually. _History lessons_. Other people’s tales. Archives. My father’s memories.’ He shrugged. ‘If your father claimed his pet system was perfect, he lied.’

That was stupidly risky, considering all the sources agreed princess Organa was madly in love with her father. She’d lost him when she was young, the Order’s psychological resumes said. She’d not spent much time with him in her Imperial Senate years, so her view of him was even more child-like idolatry. She’d lost him in martyr-making circumstances, and she’d been at least partly responsible for it, which of course hadn’t helped her make a balanced, remotely objective image of him. Et cetera. Taken intellectually, it was pretty understandable.

If Brendol had had the decency to die when Armitage had been still a child, Hux might have ended up like her, too... And this thought, he decided, sobering with a shudder, was definitely the spice talking.

‘He didn’t.’ Leia rolled herself on the side, curled a little. She might be cold. She might be _touched_ by the mentions of her father. Worth remembering. ‘He understood there had been a time for deep, systemic reforms, and this time had been wasted. We tried to build something better in our New Republic. Focus on the self-governance. Flexibility. Freedom for the planets. I guess this is not the value for you? But if you force others to join, you can expect a lot of resistance. No matter how big an army you have.’

‘Many planets and systems would willingly join anyone who offered them safety, peace, free education and healthcare system. Your own brother... He didn’t have any higher education, did he? He wouldn’t have a chance for it at Tatooine, save for leaving for the Imperial Academy. And after you took away the Academy, what was left? On Tatooine, you invested some money. Created educational and social nets. But it was only because of your personal sentiment. It’s enough to change one planet, but not enough to help the galaxy. There are thousands of planets like Tatooine.’

‘And, as you were kind enough to notice, I and my brother, not the Order, helped one of them.’

‘That was a good program,’ Hux admitted. ‘But _personal_ and limited by it. We want to create the new, uncorrupted and impartial ruling class. Raise the society to think in terms of the pangalactic solidarity. The Order would be the first seed of a... neutral, common force. From teachers and healers to the soldiers, the elite of the new galaxy would be more impartial and less corrupted, because not attached to any planet, any family, any business—only to the galactic commonwealth. And we could send them wherever they would be needed.’

‘Like the Jedi?’

‘Well, it’s in the name.’

She looked shocked, which surprised Hux. His father’s obsession with Jedi was well-known within the Order and among those Imperials who decided to cooperate with the New Republic. The outline of their ideology wasn’t exactly a secret. It shouldn’t be new information to her, but if it was, then he accidentally gave her—damn.

‘Our founders held a great deal of admiration for the Jedi. The way they were raised, the lack of egoistical attachments and blinding emotions, the devotion to the common good, not individuality... He, we, the Order, took a lesson from this. A governance system big enough to span the whole galaxy couldn’t be ruled by a class of people blinded by the interests of their own planets, blocking every change and every vote. Not like your Republic. It never was the real galactic government. The galactic government would be above the whims of single planets; it would focus on the good of the whole.’

‘So the Order is the forge of the new elites, drugged and brainwashed to be loyal only to the Order?’

‘Only if you think your father brainwashed you by making you loyal to the Republic.’ She flinched and for a second Hux was afraid she was going to hurt him. ‘And not to be loyal to the Order alone, but to the galaxy and all its citizens.’

‘Except the Hosnian System.’

‘No, it was—exactly this. The sacrifice of some was necessary to help many.’

She tensed and raised her hand. Hux cursed inwardly— but Leia wasn’t her son. She just breathed deeply, took some rations from the picnic-container and began to eat them, slowly. Hux, not sure what to do, also took a little portion. Crumbled it in his hands and tried to swallow the small, grain-like pieces. Calming meds always killed his appetite.

‘You really think you’re inspired by Jedi?’

‘We improved the concept, but I cannot deny its roots.’ Besides, they were the legal descendants of the Republic, via Palpatine who was legally declared the Emperor. They had the right to use all of its inheritance. ' We are better. There were never enough of them, because of that foolish Force-elitarism.'

‘Lack of attachments.’ Leia’s smile was full of pain. ‘Would you have shot at Hosnian Prime if your mother was there?’

It stole his breath. Like the whole galaxy, billion stars, planets, moons, asteroids, everything, slipped into his throat and chest to strangle him.

‘She was the Rims’ lower class, she wouldn’t ever come to the Core...’

‘Ah, so you would not? I ask because of my son. He killed Han. He watched your army almost killing me. But you would not?’

He couldn’t answer. The galaxy in his chest was expanding, from his chest to his throat, his mouth, the black hole’s darkness before his eyes.

His father had left both his mother and his wife behind when it had been commanded, but his son balked. Perhaps this flaw in Armitage’s personality was inherited by the new stormtroopers. Perhaps the desertion of that “Finn” and all which had followed it, including the destruction of the Starkiller Base, really was his own fault. Perhaps the attachment he allowed his soldiers to feel—didn’t destroy it with violence and encourage killing and distrust, unlike his father—would be the cause of their downfall. He destroyed everything—and then all those murders, all those being on Hosnian Prime—for nothing, just like the princess’ propaganda was saying, for show and fireworks—perhaps his mother, by some terrible accident, really was there—

Leia’s hand touched his cheek and he almost jumped. But she didn’t aim at his eyes, she was... gentle, he decided.

‘I promised you a ceasefire. I broke my promise. I’m sorry. I don’t have any information about your mother being at Hosnian Prime. She probably wasn’t.’

Hux could breath again. His fear was slowly dissolving. Leia moved her palm behind his ear, combed her fingers through his hair. He should have jerked away. Yet he didn’t, blaming it on the spice’s side-effects. Just like the thought that such short hair as his probably didn’t feel to her like hair at all, but a pelt.


	8. Chapter 8

While the First Order’s ideology was blatantly tyrannical, the problems they pointed to—the problems they _used_ for their own agenda—were real, and destroying the real lives of the real beings in their real galaxy. Hux emphasised that, accusing Leia of putting some theory and philosophy over the actual lives. Morbidly funny, in his mouth.

Of course she didn’t do any such thing. Never. She was just aware it was impossible to create a working system without philosophy and compromises. And she had seen where tyranny, the compromise of people’s right to discussion and choosing, led to. But she could see—if not empathise, not ever, for she would take a rock and throw it at the nearest police station and die fighting, instead of waiting for her death—why this answer might not be enough for starving mothers.

She could admit, during hours spent on talking with Hux about practical details, that the Order (even if mostly thanks to some morally shady allowances) had quite a good... knowledge, recognition, map... of the problems, including structural ones, troubling the Rims, the poorer parts especially. And they address some of them, albeit in too limited a fashion. Taking into its fold only the healthy children, for example, while the government, as she pointed out, needed to take care of everybody, and Hux saw the differences in money and resources it made, right?.

Now, Leia more or less understood the basic concept—or at least the version of it Hux subscribed to: not the making of the whole galaxy into one big labour camp, but... educating a class of officers and clerks devoted to the state only, with the army serving as the stick. And probably, she thought ironically, blackmailing everybody for money... Well, it still seemed too tyrannical for her to support, but at least not downright lunacy. Unfortunately, the means they were using—the means Hux shrugged off as temporary, necessary or unavoidable—was monstrous, and still led straight towards making the galaxy that one big labour camp.

An impossible end serving as an excuse to kill billions. The saner it looked, the more dangerous it was, the more beings it could lure into its grasp. Just like it had lured Leia’s son.

Ben. Kylo Ren. The Supreme Leader. Hux obviously hated the subject as much as she did, and it both irritated Leia, in that irrational, motherly way—how could he hate her son!—and scared her so much it felt like in the core of her being, this Force she was learning to recognise and name, was shivering. Her son was so cruel to his own people they preferred not to mention his name.

And so they ended up focusing on the technicalities, resources, legalities, culture, logistics, and all other possible difficulties. Hux and Leia argued endlessly about corrections and amendments, as if they expected their nomination for Chancellor, First Senator, or Supreme Leader in hours instead of sitting on a small rock in the middle of nowhere.

At least it was something constructive to argue about. If they had talked about ideology, they would have hit the wall of the sacred doctrine pretty quickly and Hux, even though they both were taking small, carefully divided doses of relaxing spice before every political discussion, would probably come close to a panic attack again.

Doubting the ideology for which you killed billions must send one straight to hell. Hux probably deserved that hell for everything he’d done, but she had to admit she didn’t quite want to see him there. And she’d promised him no harm, which was a far less suspicious excuse.

The least suspicious: she got glimpses of what could have tempted and stole her Ben. He’d travelled a lot with Luke, he’d seen all those injustices with his own eyes, maybe had seen the Order’s propaganda. For a young, sensitive boy, feeling all that suffering through the Force, living so long in the Jedi Academy’s shelter—it might have been enough. And if he’d turned because of righteous anger at the suffering, if he’d turned because he’d mistaken a mirror for a light... It could all be repaired. She would just need to show him where the light really shone.

This, or kill him in some battle, aboard a ship, in his TIE, among thousands of stormtroopers. But she had already lost her family once. Betraying the cause now would mean betraying their parents and the whole of Alderaan. Better to—

She never really let herself end this thought, preferred to focus on hours-long debates with Hux about, let’s say, the education system. Or the commercial intellectual property law in the case of generic pharmaceuticals. Anything, really, as long as it let Leia forget. About Ben. About Han. About Luke. About the little detail that, after Lando find them (and he _will_), she’ll need to make some decisions regarding Hux’s fate. About Ben, again, and the family she kept losing for the greater good.

Better to—

Sometimes, when Leia and Hux were both tired and too far into the discussion to just stop and go to their bed, they ended in a bedroom. In Hux’s room, always. First, because Leia wasn’t so naive as to let him come to hers, and second, because Hux’s room had three beds, so they could nod off in the middle of the sentence and slowly fall asleep, murmuring statistics.

He didn’t mind, he slept better when Leia was present. A treason on the part of his mind and body, the one which lacked the usual medication, like so many other things.

Tonight, Leia felt asleep first. A rarity. Hux was watching her.

He should probably try to get an upper hand. Grab, hold, strangle her. And if he was so sure the Force would stop him, he should at least _fantasise_ about killing her. Or triumphing over her, at the very, very least, although he supposed fantasising about the triumph of the Order would be...a safer option. The safest fantasy would be the Order triumphing with the current Supreme Leader as its head, but Hux wasn’t going to torture himself with it when said current Supreme Leader wasn’t near enough to listen to his thoughts.

What use would getting an “upper hand” have? They were the only two here; what would he do, imprison her in a bedroom? She wasn’t even ordering him around so much lately. They were... cooperating, he supposed. There was no need to break the détente for the sake of some ideological purity. Especially when there was no one to notice it and reward or punish him.

Besides, Leia’s experience in administration was valuable. Hux’d made countless little corrections to his visions of the future galactic order in the last days. If they had talked like this before—if the Supreme Leader and the High Command had seen the possibility of negotiation—perhaps this bloodshed and destruction could have been avoided: Starkiller, Supremacy and countless recruits’ lives—not to mention Republican losses, little as he cared about them.

Those thoughts were close to treason, Hux knew, and those, he couldn’t blame on spice. But the only mindreader presented on this asteroid was asleep, and he was watching her. And she had made it pretty clear she wasn’t going to check his mind constantly. For most of time, he could think what he wanted. It was a strange feeling, the freedom he was testing carefully.

Of course, half of his thoughts had been stupid or treacherous. Or just plain absurd, lazy, and _definitely_ spice-induced. Refusing the future as a galactic ruler and staying here, learning more about gardening, making silly bath bubbles, swimming in the lake. Or becoming the galactic leader, like it’d been planned, but with Leia’s, well, probably forced help in governing. He might spare Ren to make her more grateful. Compliant. _Happy_.

Like the princess who had let her home planet burn would care about her son. Those dreams were just more proof freedom wasn’t good for intelligent beings. The first proof was he was watching Leia sleep now, counting her breaths, instead of turning the light completely off and falling asleep.

Leia looked younger in the dim light of the lamp’s night program. Or perhaps just more relaxed. Untied. In daytime, she was controlled just as much as the higher Order’s officers: straight spine, muscles and neurons braided tightly into dozens of the proper poses, smiles and words.

The Rebellion’s freedom, his teachers had said, is the freedom to abuse. Rebels love freedom too much to care about those hurt by it, love freedom for themselves only. Ha, you wouldn’t guess from how tightly controlled Leia normally was. Like this hair of hers. Hux was irrationally disappointed when he’d discovered she was pragmatic enough to not pull it free for sleep. Which, of course, was a totally different matter. Hux’s thoughts were dissolving one into another. He should go to sleep.

Leia sighed, turned and threw the quilt from herself. He was well-aware he should shrug. He was more than well-aware he should not get up to cover her back, like some damn faithful servant. He was aware of this with crystal clarity during every one of the three steps, stretching like a syrup—the wonders of spice!—it took him to come to her side and cover her.

Her eyelashes fluttered. ‘The Force suggests you aren’t going to kill me tonight,’ she murmured, tucked herself under the quilt and immediately fell asleep again.

There was no need to reply, but he whispered 'No, I’m not,' either way. It felt like a rebellion.

In the bathtub, Leia was laughing so hard Hux thought she was going to choke on the foam— perhaps he could claim he killed her, then.

He’d left some screws in the bathroom and came back for them, automatically. Years of living on the rusty ships-barracks showed themselves, because upon seeing her it hadn’t crossed his mind to leave, he just mumbled “sorry” and kept calmly searching shelves and drawers until she burst into laughter.

He tried to apologise properly and considered going out—except he still didn’t find the screws and the princess waved her hand dismissively.

‘I’m too old for caring if boys drop jaws at the sight of me.’

He actually glanced at her at this, half on automatic. She was apparently washing her hair today, because it was falling down her back and for a second it took his breath away.

For a second only. ‘You’re not old at all, you look fantastic, I’m just accustomed to communal living.’ His voice sounded flat even to his own ears.

She shook her head, still laughing. The hair moved in the water. ‘I spent years in conspiracy, too, I’m not—wait, who taught you those basic pleasantries?’

‘Logic? _Basic_ knowledge about human interactions? My father’s wife?’

His father’s wife might be a true answer, he realised after the words left his mouth. She hadn’t had her own children and had been trying to steal a part of his love. If he had been left on Arkanis, she’d have probably done everything for him—she and his mother both…

It wasn’t like it mattered. He shouldn’t have been thinking about impossible things. He should focus on creating the best possible reality. For example, constructing the traps. He finally found the screws.

But he turned at the doorstep, just to glance at this _stupidly_ long hair again. He couldn’t resist. And apparently, his glance was stupidly long, too, because Leia tipped her head to the left, curious, and he had to retreat, feeling caught.

‘What was that about?’

Leia’s hair was already tied, however loosely, in two buns. The tea was made, too. And it was his favourite one, which meant Leia was preparing for the little friendly interrogation session. Hux would prefer a discussion about the possible future of the galaxy.

‘What “that”, Princess?’

‘Do you know you “princess” me either when you are angry, or when you’re nervous and want to pretend to be angry?’

His jaw tensed. ‘I was somewhat aware.’

‘You’re not angry now.’

‘I might become, if Your Highness wishes so.’

‘We do not.’ She laughed, but it sounded more forced than usual. ‘Listen, I... trust you. To an extremely limited extent, but I trust you. It’s probably very foolish, considering the circumstances, but I’ve spent half of my life in conspiracy. I trusted and not trusted in many different terrible circumstances. But I also know loose ties always come back to bite you. Be it a feeling or a question, or a grudge.’

Hux weighed the options of inventing some cover story. Remembered he was talking with a Force-user and politician.

‘I’ve never seen hair so long as yours,’ he said, resigned. It felt terribly childish, spoken aloud. ‘The Order doesn’t allow it. Even Grand Admiral Sloane cut hers shorter. I guess it—surprised me. When you had it, like then. Untied. That’s all. I was just... looking at it.’

‘Ah.’ Leia’s face softened. ‘Right. I... Well. Of course, a military junta wouldn’t... There’s indeed some work with it... I may wear it loose sometimes.’

‘It’s impractical.’

But she was already untying her buns.

‘I think we don’t have to care about pragmatism much, here. If I got tired of brushing it, I’ll put that on you. Voila!’ She shook her head, let the hair fall all the way down.

It was different when it wasn’t wet. There was more grey visible, but it was also more shining, and thicker. Moving freely. All of which was to be expected, from purely a physics perspective. Hux told himself he wasn’t—whatever poetic, silly adjective would be fitting here—but he was, he was.

He wanted to touch it, just like those few days ago, at the lake. Downright pathetic.

‘And how do you like it?’

‘I told you, it’s impractical—‘

‘I’ll take that as “very much, thank you”.’ Leia took a lock of her hair in the hand, slide it between her fingers. ‘I forget about it, usually. But it’s a blessing.’

‘It must be heavy.’

‘Worn like this? Indeed. But it’s not a problem, once in a while. It’s a nice reminder.’ Her smile became melancholy. ‘All traditional Alderaanian hairstyles are like this. I had been expected to follow the tradition as a princess and then Senator, and after the Death Star... I couldn’t leave it behind.’

He wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t find Alderaan’s destruction a reasonable move, but he also doubted this was what the princess wanted to hear.

‘It’s very pretty.’ He tried desperately.

‘Not impractical?’

‘Can be both.’

‘Not if beauty is the purpose.’

Aha. Royal word games. What else could Hux expect.

‘My father liked things for their looks. He liked things which looked luxurious, regal, stable.’

‘It’s interesting how you always try to hurt me by comparing me to your father. You must have really hated him. Or think I hated him so much. No, sorry to destroy your image of him, but he was hardly the most important Imperial on my radar.’

It took Hux aback and stung, surprisingly much, to be reminded how little his…all those adults on _Imperialis_, all those Imperial officers, the remnants of a glorious past and the seeds of the glorious future, had meant to the Rebels.

Well, they’d shown the Republic how wrong it was, right? Except it would make the Hosnian Cataclysm not a military move, not a necessity, not a step on a road to the better, ordered life for the Rims, just a—

A depressive spiral. Anxiety attack. Not a grain of truth in it, just a neurological condition.

Stims were running out and so was the relaxation spice, despite the fact he and Leia took small portions. It would be gone in less than a week if they kept the current pace, and thinking about it shouldn’t have made his stomach tighten like this.

‘Do you want to touch it? The hair?’

Hux blinked rapidly.

‘You’re an engineer. Even if you mostly design and supervise, you need to see how things work in practice, right? And if you never saw something like this—it’s only fair.’

Leia was a mind-reader. She must have checked his thoughts. He forgot himself. A mistake he would gladly put on spice. But he was the one making the decision about eating the drug..

‘You don’t have to, of course. It wasn’t an order.’

Now, she was taunting him. Hux set his jaw. Well, it wasn’t like he asked, right? If she was in his head and decided to indulge him, if was her weakness, not his. He would be only taking advantage.

So he shrugged, sat on a chair next to her, and took a lock of her hair, careful to not touch the skin. The hair was less thicker than he expected. Softer. So very, very soft, like—he tried to find something similar in his memories—like fresh, dry snow. He curled it along his fingers. Elastic enough, but not so much like the nerf’s coat he remembered from his childhood. Probably more fragile than his own hair, too, because of the length and Leia’s age: the hairs seemed already uneven and broken at the endings. So thin. But so soft, so soft. Ultimately, he kept coming back to this thought.

And his feelings, after the first thrill—touching something forbidden, like his father’s wife’s jewellery or the kitchen’s sweets!—kept returning to “indebted”. The most precarious position of them all.

‘I can’t stand these warmed, cheap rations anymore. They’re not even so healthy,’ he said accusatory, like it was Leia’s fault the droids here weren’t cooking ones. ‘I will have to pick vegetables from the garden.’

‘Oh, the _terror_.’

‘Well, it’s not like _you’re_ _hurrying_ to make your culinary proposal reality, are you? Typical Republican Senator.’ He untangled his fingers from her hair and rose. ‘But don’t worry, o Your Highness, the orphan from the Rims you so graciously made your valet will make some nutritionally unbalanced traditional food for you, too. Just don’t call it an authoritarian decision.’ And with this, Hux went to his bedroom, ignoring Leia’s (_hurt_) abrupt laughter.

Leia, after spending half of the evening shouting at, mocking and finally asking Hux to come talk with her—slept in her bedroom. Hux couldn’t sleep at all. He wondered if it was possible to choke on hair so long. Or wake up in the night with it stuffing your mouth and nose, blocking your air access.

No, of course not, that’s stupid, he told himself. A lot of humans and other intelligent beings preferred long hair. If it had been so inconvenient, they wouldn’t. Besides, Leia slept with her hair braided, and he assumed it was a normal practice. Less bother with brushing. Less bother with hairs flying everywhere, pesky little things, sitting on your coat like a fur. Less bother with escaping death from your own hair sneaking into your throat and nostrils, and—

He was acting beyond ridiculous. It must have been Ren’s influence, this constant fear of getting choked drilled deep into Hux’s mind. And this realisation was even more irritating, because how could Ren dare to—who Hux was to give up the control over himself so easily.

At dawn, realising there was no use in trying to fall asleep anymore, he got up, went to the kitchen and tried to recall and _deduce_ from his general chemical knowledge how to make something like crepes.

He only messed up things twice before succeeding. Once with the ingredients’ proportions (too much flour; he remembered there was a way of repairing it by adding other things, and he deduced correctly milk was needed) and once with underestimating how fast the dough would fry and how much fat was needed; his first few crepes were all dripping with fat and the whole kitchen stank of it. But his fourth or sixth seemed all right, and things went smoothly from there.

He opened the window, hoping the diffusion would take care of the smell before the princess came, and sat down near it. He was thinking of the smell of bombed cities and blaster wounds, the burnt meat and hair, plastic and metal, but fat, too. He was thinking of his father’s stories, for the first time in years, of people melted into puddles of fat—“not at all different than the nerfish fat we put on the pan, boy. We’re all just animals, bags of meat and chemicals, there’s no difference between culling a herd and culling a society...”—and dried blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pfft. I changed the basic idea, then I returned to the previous one, then I mixed them... Oh, and in the meantime, the world got all _funny._ It's either the best or the worst time for writing fics, especially mine type of fics, but oh well. I'm not the queen of myself. ;)
> 
> Billion thanks to evilmouse for betaing this for me! HEARTS' ATTACK! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise - to myself, mostly - it's the last time when they philosophising so much. XD And there's some progress...

‘Thank you,’ murmured quietly enough Hux could hope Her Highness would miss it.

It was on one of their picnics when the words escaped Hux’s mouth. Perhaps it was this crushing feeling of a debt which forced them.

Leia looked at him from the rations and snacks—and the cup of tea, because of course she refused to drink it from a thermos. She arched an eyebrow.

‘For being… cooperative… through this whole ordeal. I know you get some intelligence and other benefits from it.’Hux was dead, if the Supreme Leader ever found about it. ‘I just can’t, I don’t—why?’ he blurted.

He wasn’t sure what answer he wished for. He wasn’t sure he wished for any precise answer at all. He was just…thinking about her falling asleep in this narrow bed in his—well, temporarily his—room. The change in the rhythm of the breath. The softness in every line of her body.

Leia sighed. Sipped some tea. Looked at the lake.

‘I meditated. A lot,’ she said finally. ‘And the Force let me see...many things. You, too. There’s anger in you, a lot of anger, but I...I sense... It doesn’t come from the darkness. It’s directed into it, yes, but _you_ doesn’t come from the darkness. And you don’t have to—you’re not—’ 

‘What?’ barked Hux, rising to his feet and balling his fist. His throat felt dry. He should have known. He should have known and never asked. ‘What am I not? What did your damn Force tell you—that I may be turned? That I may betray my own, like your thrice damned son did?’ And he felt fear rising just with the words, because they weren’t as absurd as they should be... He kicked it back behind the door of his mind, letting fury take the reins. ‘Or did you just need your sacred Force to tell you I’m not some cursed child, born from the darkness, like _your father_? A bastard born in the darkness of the Rims, and cursed like everything which came from there to dirty your precious Core’s carpets?’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Oh no, _Princess_, you meant exactly that. What more did you think before the Force was kind enough to inform you I am an intelligent being just like you, minus the royal education—’

‘…I was sure since the Hosnian Cataclysm, nobody else in the universe is so destruct—’

‘Ah, you think it was my royal whim. Of course, just like it was the Senate’s whim to spend money to erect your father’s monument, while your own ex-Rebels were still homele—’ Pressure on his throat cut Hux short.

Leia was white and trembling.

‘So very _kind _of you,’ she hissed, ‘to remind me you blew up my father’s symbolic grave, too. And what little souvenirs of _my home and family_ were preserved in Republic’s museum. I’m not even sure what I could take from you which would be worth a quarter of what you stolen from me. Arkanis? You didn’t even remember it. Your precious fleet? It’s meant to be broken. You already had almost twice the time I had to enjoy whatever dark hole you call home, but I promise you, after we win, I’ll take you alive and make you watch, just like they forced me—I’ll hold you very close, _General_, let you smell the blood and the sweat, and the piss of the people you failed, you—’ Her voice broke all of sudden.

The pressure on Hux’s larynx disappeared. He tried to collect his thoughts. The Princess had been indulgent—and he, like an idiot, had destroyed that security. He might have ended up dead, he still might end up dead. Because of what really? Hurt pride? Hurt _feelings_? What feelings he could have—what feelings could Leia induce in him? None. He should think rationally. And it was such a rational strategy, indeed, to remind her of Alderaan.

‘Hosnian system’s citizens _didn’t_ suffer—it wasn’t like a siege or a blockage, or a bombing, or— It should have spared the galaxy the war. It wasn’t just for show, like Alderaan—I’d have advised Tarkin not to—’

‘If this is your idea of comforting me, I advise you to stop.’

‘I don’t know!’

Her sadness tainted his anger and now he couldn’t be properly furious at her, just irritated without clear direction, irritated at them both—both! While it had been _she_ who almost choked him and threatened him, and had told him she’d thought him some kind of cursed, sub-human creature! And yet he felt sorry and foolish, the high of speaking the truth all but evaporated from his veins.

‘What you don’t know.’ Leia’s voice was completely flat; she didn’t even look at him. ‘I can tell you. This _is_ your idea of comforting. This is what you had been told and you cling to it.’ She lay down on her back, eyes fixated on the sky. ‘My father told me it’s worth to sacrifice anything for your ideals. And here I am, and there’s no one... Everything I built in his name—you turned to dust, again, you just... You made me lose Alderaan again, and in vain, and—it wasn’t a sacrifice, we didn’t choose them as martyrs. I didn’t, I tried to—I lied, _I_ _told him_, I’m sure he believed me, he just—’ She stopped, took a breath. Her voice was still emotionless, even when the sentences were shattering. ‘And _you_ made Alderaan’s slaughter all in vain. You cannot understand what it means. You don’t understand what you’ve done. It is on me, even. I should have burnt the galaxy down, but found those ships of yours. I didn’t. Chose the wrong answer, gave the wrong name, again. But I’ll start again. I already started. My father’s ideals. My people died believing in them and I’ll keep rebuilding them over and over. And this time, I’ll burn the galaxy down for it, if I have to. But you’re… Nobody blew up _your_ home y_et_. Perhaps it will end better for you if you stop. Cling to what they said. Come here,’ she added suddenly, turning her head to him and laughing. ‘There’s. No one else. Always. Like always. No choice.’

No one else to do what, Hux thought dimly, comfort you or for me to come to, eventually? His idea of comforting was pretty blurry and amounted mostly to memories of life in Jakku’s children pack and the Order’s—partly his own, partly his father’s, partly Cardinal’s—textbooks about taking care of the freshly recruited children. He somehow doubted they would work for an almost twenty years older princess, their enemy, Vader’s daughter, right now (if he’d understood correctly), promising him the war to the very last soldier, and then unkind death.

Yet, lacking any other idea, he did what the textbooks said. Lay on his side alongside her, leaned on the elbow, held her closer, make sure her head was level with his chest—so she would hear his heart clearly—put an arm around her waist and started to make circles with his thumb. Touched her forehead with his free hand, combed through her hair, along the hairline, behind the ear and onto the neck. Repeated.

His father liked to emphasise that humans are mammals, and this pearl of Brendol’s wisdom was actually supported by Armitage’s education, so whatever trick worked for the husbandry animals they’d had on _Imperialis_ should work on Her Highness, too. Framed this way, it was even satisfying and ideologically safe.

Lo and behold, princess _did_ seem to relax slowly. Hux wouldn’t wager this meant “she wasn’t hurt anymore,” but he was pretty sure it meant his chances at not being strangled rose. He did well—passably.

He wasn’t enjoying Leia’s pain. It wasn’t really earned by him, it was caused by an irrational decision years ago. It was in no way his, even in the contemporary details, like...

‘I’m sorry we blew up your father’s monument.’

She laughed. Would be a good sign, if it wasn’t laced in hysteria.

‘You aren’t sorry at all. You didn’t even remembered it existed.’

Aha, here they go, with the princess telling him what he felt or not. Hux allowed himself to bathe in irritation. After all, Leia’s fury was seemingly gone, replaced by a mix of resignation and detachment, and he was relatively safe.

‘I _am_ sorry.’ He wondered how to explain. ‘I’m sorry I mentioned it and I’m sorry it pains you now. I’m—like you said, it wasn’t the intention. It was just…’

'Ah, necessary.'

'More like unavoidable. I’m of course sorry about many unavoidable losses the war brings. I’m sure you were, too, in your Rebellion. But every change has its cost and the current state brings suffering and losses, and tragedy to the Rims, too. They aren’t less painful just because...’ He trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence. Because there’re no speeches about it? It would sound like an accusation of himself.

Leia smiled without an iota of joy.

‘You’re uncomfortable because I’m sad and by a miracle you have some shreds of empathy left. This, I believe. I believe you find it not perfect, in some abstract way, that you had to kill all those children and mothers.’ He flinched and he didn’t like that. ‘I’m just not sure if it makes a difference. Those mothers and children are dead either way, right? Those animals and plants, and architecture, and art, it’s all gone exactly the same. You know—of course not—on Hosnian Prime, there was the tradition of celebrating the beginning of the autumn with sunsail races. Citizens would come at the riverbank and make a picnic there for the whole day, like we here, except it was much bigger and more organised, and people had their own tents—’

‘They wasted the money which could be used for helping the Rims.’

‘Shh. I know. I know. Like you’re wasting money for your pretty uniforms. And you basically burnt all Hosnian’s money in a fireplace to make a show. How did that help the Rims, I wonder.’

‘It will be a help to them in the long run. It overthrew the illegal government and destroyed the big part of the army, which will allow for warless power transition. The legal, strong rule will provide for the Rims.’

‘I’m pretty sure, you, being an engineer, see the amount of improbable hypotheses you’ve introduced here.’ She shifted in his hold. ‘But I was talking about sunsail races. Hosnian Prime. You see, it was all very pretty, and I of all people should have known better and appreciated it more, remembered it all in case...’ Her throat moved. She was shivering. Maybe Hux felt some triumph—but that would make him exactly the kind of egoist monster she so graciously deemed him not. A monster like her son. ‘But I didn’t. After Alderaan, I should have known better than to let any moment pass, any grain of sand to be left unnoticed and unremembered, and not mourned—and yet.’

‘It would be useless, unproductive and impossible for the human mind to store countless inconsequential things—’

‘Oh, right. This is what comforts you. Numbers. One is smaller than ten, ten than hundred, a few billions—smaller than a trillion. So if you sacrifice one, then why not sacrifice the billion? Why not sacrifice the trillion, then? Why not the whole galaxy, General? It would stop the suffering. Why not to kill all mothers, so no children will be born to suffer and kill ever again?’

Tightness in Hux’s chest, the first herald of fear, accompanying of many of their discussions, appeared. Suffocating. Something getting hold of his mind, a constant repetition of thoughts, feelings and words, and not the _right ones_. Depression and anxiety spiral, he told himself for the billionth time, but the words didn’t calm him. Meaninglessness. Everything was—of course not. It couldn’t.

Leia raised her hand, touched his cheekbones; he pulled away, instinctively, before reminding himself he was “comforting her” and this demanded some intimacy.

‘See, the Force is life.’ Her fingers were slowly contouring his face, trailing along his jaw, grazing upon the lip, touching the nose. She wouldn’t be able to gouge his eyes like that, gouging eyes needed some momentum, so Hux let her. ‘When a child is born, the Force sings. For every child, for Ben, for you... Even when the circumstances are terrible, when there’s nothing for this child to come to... The Force’s singing with joy. And there’s always someone, something coming into life in the universe, and it brings so much light. And with the Force one can find the light in the darkest hour, when the war is raging, when people die on you, when your planet is destroyed... Alderaan died, but so many were born, at the very same moment.’ She laughed, darkly. ‘_You_ were born, weren’t you?’

‘A little earlier. Are you trying to tell me the tragic circumstances in which kids in the Rims lives don’t matter, because they’re alive and this is enough for the Force and your Core’s religious beliefs?’

‘I’m trying to tell you—perhaps you were right, perhaps I thought… But no one comes from, comes here in darkness. And then we take this light and what we make of it. Murderers. Abusers. Monsters.’ She was shaking so much he wondered if she hadn’t caught a cold. ‘Circumstances. Of course they matter.’

So it was about the Supreme Leader, Hux thought with relief. In this case, he didn’t need to think about Leia’s words at all. Let this dark, terrifying hole which had started to form in his body—mind—tempting him into madness, dissolve.

‘So, did you think you were sparing those Hosnian Prime’s kids the tragic fate of living? Saving them from the crime of living comfortably, when so many others can’t? Killing them, so they won’t—’

‘It wasn’t about them.’

‘That’s even worse, don’t you think? Either way, they’re dead. And you, you aren’t even _curious_ about them. You’re an engineer, you invent things. How come you aren’t even curious?’

He repeated her last word, bewildered. Curious. What did she mean, curious? Of all the things she could accuse him off, lack of curiosity seemed like such a strange choice.

‘You never have been in the Core, have you? And you destroyed a part of it, and you didn’t even care enough to be curious about what you destroyed. To judge for yourself. To know what you’re taking away. From the galaxy. From yourself. You won’t be able to ever see it, too.’

‘I’m not—I know enough.’

‘What? Propaganda and some numbers?’

‘Numbers are the truth.’ He felt safer on this ground. ‘I can tell you how many beings were born and died on Hosnian in an average standard minute. I can tell you the GDP, per citizen and global, the unemployment rate, the minimum wage—‘

‘Were you thinking about the children being born in every second of your silly speech and that laser’s travel? Watching it, were you counting how many you would kill exactly? How many hopes would be crushed? How many of the newborn kids probably would manage to smile or cry and how many of them wouldn’t even have time for this?’

Of course not. It would be counter-productive. And, actually, put like this, via these sentimental, useless, hindering-any-action lenses, it seemed rather nauseating. Not a triumph at all.

Cheap rhetoric trick. They had analysed it, during self-reflection lessons. He shouldn’t allow himself to get swayed by this.

‘I was aware of it. Did you think about the Rims’ citizens starving every time you were giving pretty, useless speeches in your Senate? Every time you took a part in your colleagues’ silly parties? Every time you went dining? Did you imagine them, dying from thirst, with every sip of your tea?’

‘I wasn’t killing them.’

‘You were. By inaction. But as far as actions go, it wasn’t me who amassed almost half of your fleet, preparing for war, waiting for an order to attack us, in one of your most heavily populated systems.’

‘If it was about the fleet, you’d declare a war first and let the score be settled between the soldiers. Like we _might_ plan.’

‘I had a duty to protect my people and the Rims first. War would take time and resources, and bring them such suffering—’

‘Mhm, sure. All these past days, and you trying to convince me you care about losses and suffering. Then why destroy civilisations just because I passed through their territory? Why recharge the Starkiller to blow up another system?’

Hux really should know better than descending into a rant about the engineering and military shortcomings of Snoke’s rule and Ren’s madness.

‘See, however I look at this,’ Leia cut into his sentences, ‘the way you used that one Starkiller’s blow was foolish. You have no government to negotiate now. You have to talk with every single system. It takes time. The others are arming themselves. If you had shot into some non-populated asteroid or a planet in the Core and then threatened to do so again, this time aiming at Hosnian Prime, the government would have given you anything. Citizens, without the desire for revenge, only terrified for their lives, wouldn’t allow a thought about war... That’s a weakness of democracy. You talked about it so much in these last days, yet you were completely unable to use it... I wonder why. Why choose the strategically ineffective and morally most abhorrent option?’

‘It wasn’t—the army’s command and the government was the objective. So we would make an impact big enough to ease the power transition and avoid a long civil war which would bring more harm. Hosnian’s civilians weren’t… It would have worked if you _didn’t_—’

‘It would _not_ work in the long term. You couldn’t destroy every planet in the galaxy. Civilians amounted to ninety-nine percent of the casualties of your military moves; it’s too high for collateral damage, don’t you think, Mister Engineer?’ There was a colour to her cheeks now and Hux feared she might get angry—dangerous—again. ‘I never ordered or took part in an attack primarily on a civilian target and I’d not kill billions of civilians to kill a few thousand Imperial officers. Nor would I push the burden of such an order on the arms of my subordinates.’

Aha. Trying to turn him, now, use his freshly-expressed frustration with the leadership. The move was so obvious it was offending.

‘I know what you’re doing. And forgive me, Princess,’ _Let her hit you, you, a darkness-born bastard, insolent servant boy, now it’s a good moment, let these damn niceties be over for good, the sooner the better, you know how it ends when the process rises uncontrolled; you’re who you are, Brendol’s brat, unit 001 commander, First Order’s general and you commanded light to do your bidding, make her hit you, now_ ‘but you never stop seeking revenge for Alderaan, so I’m sceptical.’

Leia didn’t hit him; it was unfair, in Hux’s opinion, prolonging the damn tension, forcing him to be the one with the last, the harshest word. She was just looking at him, still shaking, wide-eyed, pale, all wrinkles on her face deepened, like something sucked all the roundness of her cheeks, made her skin cling tightly to her bones.

She finally coughed: 

‘You think it was a _revenge_?’

‘I think it was personal. We tend to disagree about morality, so—’

‘You think blowing up Hosnian Prime with their billions of innocents was just, because the Rims suffer and it was…a retribution. But me wanting to punish those who actively served in the armies of the regime who destroyed a non-armed planet is personal revenge?’

‘I didn’t say you hadn’t—’

‘They think so.’ Something changed in her face, suddenly. Literally transformed, like a puzzle piece completing a picture. ‘You don’t think anything for yourself. So this is what they think, those fat old Imperial cowards, so afraid of fighting with us they hid behind children. This is why—Hosnian Prime didn’t have to make military sense, because it was only their revenge. And they were still too afraid to _face_ _us_, so chose to destroy the whole system.’

‘If this ego-boost helps your feelings.’

‘It doesn’t.’ She turned her head, amused malice shining in her eyes. ‘Poor thing. A tool of old men’s revenge. Kid-commander and commander of kids. Made into the murderer of billions because of the officers so incompetent they couldn’t even understand when they lost.’

Hux wanted to shove her off, but he couldn’t quite move. Her words echoed inside his head—they were untrue, of course, but in case, just in case if they weren’t, hypothetically, then what would—what would he—what kind of fool—monster—fool would he be?

‘You can’t even use resources because you burnt them all down. The galactic economy is in shambles, the social and charity funds for the Rims got frozen or transferred to the military department...’ Leia shook her head. ‘You’re deluding yourself thinking about some hypothetical, but somehow always unreachable future, instead of the currently observable consequences. And they’re very simple,’ her voice lowered to a gentle whisper all of sudden, all viciousness gone from it. ‘You didn’t help a one soul, _Armitage_. You just killed billions and wasted a lot of kyber.’

He would like to think he was going to find a screeching, scorching hot reply, he just couldn’t use it, because Leia put a hand to his mouth. And kissed him.

Well, kissed her palm, speaking with the engineering precision, but all it took was him responding (there was no one else_, there’s no one else_) and she first loosened her fingers, let them fall, let his tongue touch her lips, and then moved her hand to his temple, holding him.

Not that he tried to escape. He took her lip between his teeth and she just smiled, Hux felt the movement of her mouth. Teasing him or welcoming the pain, he didn’t know, didn’t care, just bit down, hard. Felt a spasm run through her body. Laughed.

Leia immediately used it, trying to push him on his back. Like he would allow it. They struggled for a moment, still laughing—kissing—tasting blood—and then Leia stopped suddenly and Hux, thrown by his own force out of balance, rolled over her. Ending, damn it all, on his back.

He managed to sit up, before Leia, with a snide comment about his tactical genius, came onto his lap. This, he thought, kissing her neck, just above the artery, was an acceptable compromise. This, and her hands fighting with the buttons of his shirt, yes, like she had been his aide, yes, yes, except the aide would never touch—stroke—his nipples like that, yes, yes, yesss, and the way her hips were rolling slowly, so excruciatingly slowly over his groin, and the way her hair felt on his hands, while he, having opened the dress’ hook, moved them down her back, along her spine, her hair so smooth and tickling, and like water or snow, like a water full of tickling duckweed, and he was drowning. Her fallen dress was pooling around them, the material so delicate it was almost impalpable. Like water, too.

Drowning. In her dress, her hair, her blood. Drowning. Dying.

It finally shook Hux back into reality, albeit he was already half-undressed then and Leia’s teeth almost carved his collar bone with her bites-kisses.

First, he realised Ren would kill him, if he ever found this memory. Second, that his erotic skills couldn’t possibly satisfy the princess of the Core’s world and the wife of Han Solo.

The thought paralysed him. He couldn’t—she would see though him, through everything, she would—everything would be—

‘Hm?’ Leia rose her head. ‘General?’

His throat was so tight speaking seemed impossible. But chaos, for once, had some mercy on the commander’s bastard.

He felt a drop of water on his naked shoulder. And the next one, on his head. His throat relaxed.

‘Why, Your Highness, it’s starting to rain.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hey, there's finally some progress! They kissed! Sure, they came back to their nice, comfy running in circles immediately, but they kissed! 
> 
> Thanks to EvilMouse for the beta!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now the other classic trope - post-kiss regrets and doubts! :D

It had been fear, Leia realised days later, which had made her kiss him.

She didn’t care about his reaction, no. She managed to scare herself with her own damn words. This stupid chasm which they had opened. The stupid chasm they’d invited Hux to come in, spluttering some nonsense, propaganda and well-aimed painful remarks. About her father. Her cause. Alderaan. She could imagine them already—_some people actually try to protect their population first, no matter what, not risk their lives in war or careless conspiracy_—so perhaps they weren’t his at all. Which would be a lot worse.

The doubts. Like she hadn’t been always so sure what’s right. Like they was any time or place for doubts, when the planets were getting destroyed. It was pretty obvious who was right. Those not standing on the smouldering wrecks of the solar systems (_the system where you put your battle-ready, order-awaiting fleet, the systems which you visited as a wanted women and started insurgencies, fully knowing the risk, letting them pay the price, letting Han pay the price, never facing your own son, never facing your own father, it was Luke, always Luke who..._).

Like there was ever any time for doubts on war. Once they had ended it it, she’d reconsider all her choices, try to learn from her current mistakes, build a better galaxy. But not now. Not now.

_And now, what?_ mocked a voice in her head. _Sipping tea and observing your current scoundrel, your little educational project breaking apart, as he’s running out of drugs? A reminder of a way the Core used economical advantage to coax poorer peripheral systems into the New Republic, isn’t it?_

She ignored the bile and focused on the fact. More and more tic-like behaviours, unconscious repeatable moves, off-thrown words suggesting Hux’s mind was constantly counting. More and more wandering through corridors and gardens, despite the now-constant rain. Leia’d found him a few times in his bedroom or the kitchen, wet, a little blueish and shivering from a cold, and yet apparently content. Lost in his thoughts, although still not far enough not to be alarmed at her presence.

Leia checked his mind from time to time. Maybe a little more often now, when he was getting less stable and she…Well, after that last show, she might need to start taking her own psychological state into equation, too. She was curious about why he’d stopped then, at the lake.

The rain, yes. But he hadn’t tried to move things along later. Which was, Leia admitted, a usual behaviour after a stupid mistake almost-leading to an erotic encounter. Ignoring it and acting like nothing happened. This, Hux did perfectly. Perhaps he was now a little bit more caring, bringing fresh greens to their table almost every day, but this might be attributed to finishing his other side-projects, developing weapons paused in favour of discussions and making food. It was a manual work, the one involving timers and proportions, _numbers_, too. His style in cooking, Leia’d describe as experimental, but edible, his hands’ manoeuvres as precise and certain, and not unpleasant to wa—

Of course, wondering about that little rat’s taste in cuisine was a model example of dangers of spending too much time with murderers. One just forgot the evil they’d done, how much suffering they’d brought to the galaxy, how much was lost because of them.

So, really, there had been, like C-3PO would put it, approximately one thousand seven hundred sixty one very good reasons for Hux to stop that _disorder_—such as that—on the lakeshore. A couple of them not related to the war, even.

For what reason did they have to continue? Trying to turn each other—too risky, a fickle method. His addiction? Sex and romance gave one a potent neurochemical kick, not so different in the hormones activated by many meds, true. Leave the spice and just sleep with me, monster dear. 

It was good he hadn’t continued. Reasonable. Just like there were a thousand reasonable reasons to check what Hux was plotting, from time to time. A couple of them related more to care than control, even.

And thanks to the rain, its materiality and chaotic nature awakening Hux’s memories, she got a first-row view of his mind. Shards, fragments drilled into the ground and broken into dust by Hux himself. A kaleidoscope, no rhyme, reason or timeline—past and the present tumbling over each other like quarrelling pittins.

The smell of burnt fat, the oily feeling on his skin, which he couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many times he washed his hands. The Starkiller Base crumbling, its overheating core burning the snow from below, counting the minutes and seconds they had left for evacuation. Chemical reactions and terms connected to hormones and drugs, on a basic enough level Leia recognised them. The siege of Arkanis, days and nights of fear, with the constant hum of the downpour, hiss of the anti-missile shields and shrills of bombs in the background,

On Arkanis, nobody can tell tears from rain, so we don’t cry. We’re strong people. We survive. Leia recalled Carise hissing this when she’d come back to political life after being stripped of her aristocratic title.

The view through a kaleidoscope. One made their own patterns, imagined their own stories.

_Fear, like despair_, Leia’s mother had used to say, _makes you a bad ruler. A ruler has to reign over themselves first and foremost. You can’t make reasonable decisions, good decisions, if you’re ruled by anything else, and Fear __is a powerful and tempting monarch. It’s easy to submit to it without noticing_.

One made their own patterns, imagined their own stories – the danger of kaleidoscope. But it was easy to see Hux running blindly away from Arkanis’ siege and Jakku’s battle, from the long, exhaustive, mind-grinding reality of the war, when he’d constructed the Starkiller and all those Destroyers, when he’d made _that_ order… One clean move. The war to end… No, the blow to end all wars. Sieges, trenches, the most prolonged parts of warfare… Hux’s inventions got rid of them.

They did so by swiftly killing anyone and everyone who opposed the Order. The solution more monstrous than the problem. And this was exactly what Leia’s mother had meant.

And as for Leia’s real, deep fears… Ha. After Alderaan, after Han’s and Luke’s deaths by Ben’s hand, after Ben destroying ships and planets she put her foot on, she didn’t think she had them.

For days, the smell of burning fat stubbornly clung to Hux, as if etched into his skin. It seemed a little weaker on the outside, so he made a habit of picking up the fresh fruits and vegetables every day, raining or not. Rain was even preferable--it has its own, strong aroma.

It also brought memories. He'd been stationed on rainy places, before; he’d designed and overseen the construction of a whole underworld city… an absolute miracle of engineering, destroyed by no one else but _some_ rogue princess on a secret mission… but then he’d been too busy, too useful to give personal attention to rain, let alone reminiscence. Now, he was acting all spoiled and lazy, wasting hours on just talking, making food—worse, wandering in the rain, _looking at the rain, _listening to it. Completely worthless. Ineffective. He wasn’t even planning anything, his mind either blank, or replaying some old memories, like a holofilm.

Now, when he paid notice, he didn’t find the hum of raindrops soothing, more like unnerving. Like sparks jumping on his nerves. It was rational, he told himself--rain was a sensory distraction, one which could drown out the sounds of a threat, but this didn’t explain the aching and heaviness that sound also put into his chest, especially in the evenings. Perhaps it was about the frequency or loudness, but he couldn’t find a pattern.

There were so many kinds of rain on Arkanis. He didn’t quite remember proper names for them, but he could always tell if the weather would turn to rain or not, which kind of rain it’d be, how long it would take to subside and similar. Or perhaps he was just lying to himself. Cognitive bias and all that. It was hard to believe he could have learnt so much in less than five years.

Any thoughts of fighting with Leia were gone. He could no longer come up with explanations of his passivity. Yes, it wouldn’t be wise to break their ceasefire, but damn it, he’d almost slept with her and what _had_ stopped him? Ideological guilt? Righteous anger? The memory of a punishment he had been given by both Snoke and his father after his underwater habitat proved to be not-hundreds-tons-of-explosives-proof?

He’d stopped at the terror of her hypothetically being disappointed with him. Like an overemotional boy from holodrama. He’d his chance at _fucking_ real royalty, rebel or not, smuggler husband or not. A royal. Him, whose mother had been… Oh, and this was another terrible thought. He shouldn’t have been thinking about his dodge as a lost chance. He should be ashamed it went so far.

Yet, right now, he felt mostly drained. _And_ was picking fruits and vegetables from the eastern greenhouse—for Leia. He hadn’t felt hungry recently.

Contrary to what the Princess thought, he knew something about agriculture. They had gardens and stables of animals on their ships. Now, the stables were mostly considered a safety measure, in case the food-producing laboratory would be… inaccessible for some reason, but artificially producing plant-based food proved less efficient than traditional cultivating. With the help of all possible technologies and fertilisers, of course; they weren’t barbarians.

They were running around the periphery of the galaxy on ships as huge as some dwarf planets, filled with people, animals, gardens, independent water circulation systems and greenhouses; and weapons, and computers, and the newest possible technologies. They had re-cultivated desolated planets. If anything, they were the exact opposite of barbarians, unlike some traditional, well-renowned worlds of art and philosophy, sending their droids and companies anywhere else, as far as they could, to drain and destroy. And not even using these resources _wisely_.

(_We were escaping, General. You could let us go. Didn’t have to __recharge the Starkiller. Didn’t have to appear over Illium. Or just didn’t have to shoot at Hosnian Prime, and we would have been still into a cold war, Starkiller in your hands, the Supremacy and your recruits untouched, the Fullminatrix and its crew all right... What did your use of this resource bring, if not destruction?_)

Resources. Focus. Like these lamiya fruits—easy to sustain, not needing much, bearing fruits even three times a year in proper conditions—a basic plant for artificial habitats. He recognised it from their planet-revitalising—and labour camp-making—projects. From what Hux had seen, each of the greenhouses was made to resemble different seasons and conditions. The green outside, the one which Leia so liked, was made for mostly psychological reasons; the real granary was hidden under the roof. A basic design. This way, some food was available even in the worst weather. Which, in theory, shouldn’t befall this artificial micro-climate—but in engineering, there was no such thing as too many safety nets.

Like the damn Starkiller Base had showed. It certainly had smelled like burning at the end, before everything diffused into space. Too many people hadn’t managed to evacuate. Some of them because of plasma wounds, some… just hadn’t made it. A closed door, a warning too late heard... Those tragic losses included a few from the most respected senior staff engineering department—those knowing enough about The Starkiller Project and other Order’s new technologies to recreate them—without Hux.

And on Hosnian System’s planets, as they were engulfed by flames, that burning smell must have been overwhelming. But it was just a blink of an eye—nobody suffered there, nobody had to wait for their miserable death, hiding into cellars, anxiously biting fingers to the accompaniment of some old prayers sang by others, because their words were too archaic for the kid to catch… Nobody had to…just that smell, that oily feeling clinging even now to his fingers as he was picking the fruit, one could almost imagine—see—it leaving a mark—an oily, stinking mark on this happy, careless garden—as though this little silly world was about to be burned down by someone. If Ren found them and decided to just send a couple Destroyers—

But there were no Destroyers in the sky, Hux tried to reason with his own mind, suddenly finding himself barely above the ground, holding the nearest tree not to fall, shaking. No Destroyers in the sky. Ren couldn’t get the Starkiller space-faring technology, because the crucial researchers had been disposed of. Dead. Killed for the cause, aha, murdered by Hux’s unspoken orders, for the greatest cause of all, his own survival.

He had needed to—for the good of the Order—he was a general, a chef engineer, and Snoke was unstable, not like Ren, but still—he couldn’t leave the Order in their hands—and what he was doing right now?

Trying to relax his jaw, his teeth gritted painfully hard now, like they’d tried to stop something from coming out of his mouth (_You have the huge reserves of metals and minerals. Their prices skyrocketed on the markets; the credit and other currencies are in shambles... Did you check what your older officers did with their retirement funds? What sort of personal investment Snoke had? How their value changed from a minute before blowing up Hosnian system to the minute after?_).

You’re an idiot, he told himself. Muscle spasms were typical symptoms of drug withdrawal. There was nothing more to it. What he was going through right now, this smell, clinging to his body, the gallopade of thoughts, the images flashing—they were all just symptoms. Perhaps hallucinations, even, but ones brought on by neurochemistry, not some bullshit like, like… like… like _doubts_.

This one small word ignited a star. And it must have had a heart of kyber, for his panic attack was brighter than any sun he looked at in his life.


End file.
